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Nuo cheminių formulių iki gyvybės aptikimo: analitinė įranga tyrimams

From Chemical Signatures to Life Detection: Analytical Instrumentation for Exploration of Ocean Worlds

Dr. Tomas Drevinskas

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.

Dr. Tomas Drevinskas is an in situ instrumentation scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he works as a technologist in the Chemical Analysis and Life Detection Group. He previously held an appointment as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, during which he designed and tested the first underwater capillary electrophoresis analytical instrument.

Currently, Dr. Drevinskas contributes to the development of a capillary electrophoresis analytical suite for chemical analysis and life detection on Enceladus, an ocean world and moon of Saturn. He is also involved in developing a capillary electrophoresis-based water-quality monitoring system for the International Space Station, with potential future applications on the Moon and Mars.

Dr. Drevinskas earned a master’s degree in pharmacy from the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, a doctoral degree in environmental analysis and ecology from Vytautas Magnus University, and a master’s degree in applied informatics from Vytautas Magnus University. His expertise is in analytical separation techniques, particularly capillary electrophoresis coupled with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C⁴D).

From Chemical Signatures to Life Detection: Analytical Instrumentation for Exploration of Ocean Worlds

Abstract

“Are we alone?” “What is life?” These are among the greatest questions humanity has asked throughout history. As our ability to observe the universe has advanced, so have our insight and knowledge. Small points of light in the sky - planets, moons, stars, asteroids, and comets - that once seemed unreachable are now separated from us primarily by the limits of technology.

Imagine that you could reach an alien moon or an ocean world. What would you want to find there? In fact, planets and moons of the outer Solar System are within our technological reach, with favorable mission opportunities occurring every several years. Humanity already possesses the technology to explore these distant worlds - not directly, but through robotic explorers capable of roving, flying, hovering, sampling, and performing scientific measurements.

The more important scientific question is: What do we want to find, how deeply should we look, and what questions do we want to answer? This ultimately becomes a question of scientific capabilities and instrumentation. One of the most profound goals is to search for evidence of life and, in doing so, better understand how “alone” we may be.

Life detection requires multiple levels of complementary observations, including the identification of biochemical patterns and molecular chirality. Such measurements demand instrumentation capable of analyzing extremely complex samples containing many chemical compounds while simultaneously detecting species at very low concentrations. Separation techniques are particularly well suited to this challenge. On Earth, however, sophisticated separation instruments are typically operated by trained scientists, and we cannot send human operators to the hostile environments of distant moons and planets.

Fortunately, we can send robotic laboratories. We have developed automated instrumentation capable of performing many of the tasks that a human operator carries out in a terrestrial laboratory. These robotic instruments can acquire, process, and transmit scientific data back to Earth - data that may ultimately help us answer some of humanity’s greatest questions.