A chemist at The University of Texas at Arlington has engineered a device capable of 

collecting drops of liquid as it travels through space and analyzing their content for con

ditions that support life.

Purnendu "Sandy" Dasgupta, Hamish Small Chair in Ion Analysis in the Department of 

Chemistry and Biochemistry and adjunct Professor in the departments of Physics and 

Electrical Engineering, created an instrument platform called open-tubular chromatog

raphy to detect and separate ions.

Dasgupta's new method, designed for space travel, uses small volumes of liquid samples 

injected into tubes that are one-fourth the diameter of the finest human hair. He said his 

instrument can analyze and present results on a single drop of liquid while flying through

 or by the atmospheres of other planets and moons.

"There are fundamental incompatibilities between how one measures key ions in an Earth-

bound lab and what NASA needs us to do in space," Dasgupta said. "We had to devise a 

method to detect and separate ions that uses very little power and does not take up too much 

space. Every little bit of weight, volume and power is expensive when traveling to another 

planet."

The project was supported by almost $1 million from NASA through a Planetary Instrument 

Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations, or PICASSO, grant. Dasgupta 

has received an additional $1.4 million Maturation of Instruments for Solar System Exploration, 

or MatISSE, grant from NASA to continue to strengthen the instrumentation and prove it can 

withstand the harsh conditions and lengthy travel times of space exploration.