Wet Chemistry Automated Sample Processing System (WASP)

摘要

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation (Ball Aerospace) was commissioned by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to produce a wet chemistry automated soil sample processing mechanism that can be used for planetary wet chemistry sample preparation. Over a three-year period. Ball Aerospace designed, fabricated and performed end-to-end tests to meet JPL's performance parameters. The final product of this effort is called the Wet-chemistry Sample Processing System (WASP). WASP is an integrated system capable of autonomously accepting 100 mg+ of solid fines within a sample cell, combining the fines with 2 mL+ of solvent, heating and containing the mixture at 200°C for 1 hour+, and finally filtering/aspirating the liquid analyte from the processed cell. The WASP carousel with 30 sample cell assemblies currently exhibits a total mass less than 15kg making it field portable in a variety of situations and contexts.