Design, Fabrication and Evaluation of an Aerogel Processor CLOXS for the Astrobiology Mission Tanpopo

抄録

This paper presents a processing machine for aerogel returned to the earth after one year exposure to space at international space station. To support the astrobiology mission by processing returned sample into suitable-sized chips for biological/chemical analysis, CLOXS (Captured particles Locating, Observation and eXtracting System) was fabricated for the extraction of triangular prism-shaped chips (=Yokans) that contained collision tracks of particles that were captured in space. A novel needle was fabricated, and was mounted on the machine to cut the sides of Yokan by repeated poking motions. Typical Yokans were chosen for the processed sides roughness evaluation, and the standard deviations of the displacement were no larger than 159 μm, which was satisfactory by the use of 200-300 μm diameter needle.