OREOcube (ORganics Exposure in Orbit cube) is an

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

that will investigate the effects of solar and cosmic radiation on selected

organic compound In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. T ...

s. It will consist in a 12-month orbital study of the effects of the

outer space Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, pred ...

environment on astrobiologically relevant materials in an external exposure facility on the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

(ISS). The project, which will be launched sometime in 2016,NASA Launch Summary
OREOcube — launch: TBA; launcher: TBA will examine the evolution of complex organic molecules in outer space, as well as the forms in which prebiotic organic compounds has been preserved. It will also study the role that solid mineral surfaces play in the photo-chemical evolution, transport, and distribution of organics. The

principal investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often us ...

is Pascale Ehrenfreund.

Objective

The objective of OREOcube is to investigate the influence of mineralogically relevant inorganic materials on the stability, modification, and degradation of the

organic molecule In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. Th ...

s during long-duration radiation exposure on the ISS.ORganics Exposure in Orbit (OREOcube) experiment on the International Space Station: Preliminary studies
Jason Alonzo Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State Polytechnic University"OREOcube" ORganics Exposure in Orbit
Julie Fletcher ''Astrobiology at NASA'' 2 May 2014

Organic compounds In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. The s ...

, thought to be the starting material for prebiotic chemistry, could have partly had an extraterrestrial origin. This addition could have been done by bombardment by

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

s and meteorites, which contain organic molecules. (see also:

pseudo-panspermia Pseudo-panspermia (sometimes called soft panspermia, molecular panspermia or quasi-panspermia) is a well-supported hypothesis for a stage in the origin of life. The theory first asserts that many of the small organic molecules used for life origina ...

)

Spacecraft description

OREOcube is packaged as an identical pair of cubes, each weighing <2 kg and containing an UV- visible- NIR

spectrometer A spectrometer () is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the ...

, a 24-sample carousel, and integral optics enabling use of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

as a light source for spectroscopy, along with the electronics and data storage to make each cube an autonomous stand-alone instrument package requiring only a standard power and data interface. Unlike other similar experiments, OREOcube will monitor changes in the UV/vis/NIR spectrum of the samples ''in situ'' at different times during their exposure to

. OREOScube will provide data sets that capture critical kinetic and mechanistic details of sample reactions that cannot be obtained with current exposure facilities in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

.Project 1F: Organics Exposure in Orbit (OREOcube): A Next-Generation Space Exposure Platform
''

NASA Astrobiology Institute The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) was established in 1998 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) "to develop the field of astrobiology and provide a scientific framework for flight missions." In December 2019 the institute ...

'' 2013 Annual Science Report University of Wisconsin Samples to be exposed include

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha a ...

s, sugars, small N-heterocycles,

nucleobase Nucleobases, also known as ''nitrogenous bases'' or often simply ''bases'', are nitrogen-containing biological compounds that form nucleosides, which, in turn, are components of nucleotides, with all of these monomers constituting the basic b ...

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple aromatic rings. The simplest representative is naphthalene, having two aromatic rings and the three-ring compounds anthracene and phenanthrene. ...

s (PAH), redox molecules, and organosulfur compounds. The project examine photodissociation reaction rates, mechanisms, products and degradation of the organic molecules in the astrobiological context. The project is being developed by the ESA with collaboration with NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) for a launch in 2016.

References

{{ESA projects Astrobiology space missions Panspermia Cosmic rays Space exposure experiments Space science experiments

Objective

Spacecraft description

See also

References