Developing a Laser Induced Liquid Beam Ion Desorption Spectral Database as Reference for Spaceborne Mass Spectrometers

Abstract

Spaceborne impact ionization mass spectrometers, such as the Cosmic Dust Analyzer on board the past Cassini spacecraft or the SUrface Dust Analyzer being built for NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper mission, are of crucial importance for the exploration of icy moons in the Solar System, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus or Jupiter's moon Europa. For the interpretation of data produced by these instruments, analogue experiments on Earth are essential. To date, thousands of laboratory mass spectra have been recorded with an analogue experiment for impact ionization mass spectrometers. Simulation of mass spectra of ice grains in space is achieved by a Laser Induced Liquid Beam Ion Desorption (LILBID) approach. The desorbed cations or anions are analyzed in a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The amount of unstructured raw data is increasingly challenging to sort, process, interpret and compare with data from space. Thus far this has been achieved manually for individual mass spectra because no database containing the recorded reference spectra was available. Here we describe the development of a comprehensive, extendable database containing cation and anion mass spectra from the laboratory LILBID facility. The database is based on a Relational Database Management System with a web server interface and enables filtering of the laboratory data using a wide range of parameters. The mass spectra can be compared not only with data from past and future space missions but also mass spectral data generated by other, terrestrial, techniques. The validated and approved subset of the database is available for general public (https://lilbid-db.planet.fu-berlin.de).