The Spacecraft Atmosphere Monitor (S.A.M.) is a highly compact

gas chromatograph Gas chromatography (GC) is a common type of chromatography used in analytical chemistry for separating and analyzing compounds that can be vaporized without decomposition. Typical uses of GC include testing the purity of a particular substance, ...

mass spectrometer ( GCMS) instrument built by

JPL The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

that is a technology demonstration 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 ...

for monitoring the cabin atmosphere in human spacecraft. S.A.M. measures both the major constituents (e.g.

nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

, and

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

) and trace

parts per billion In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo-units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, they ...

volatile chemicals (e.g.

benzene Benzene is an organic chemical compound with the molecular formula C6H6. The benzene molecule is composed of six carbon atoms joined in a planar ring with one hydrogen atom attached to each. Because it contains only carbon and hydrogen atoms, ...

ethanol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl ...

siloxanes A siloxane is a functional group in organosilicon chemistry with the Si−O−Si linkage. The parent siloxanes include the oligomeric and polymeric hydrides with the formulae H(OSiH2)''n''OH and (OSiH2)n. Siloxanes also include branched compound ...

)in the spacecraft cabin atmosphere to ensure the help safeguard the health of the astronauts. S.A.M. has a total mass of 9.5 kg and uses 40W (nominal) during operation. S.A.M. is an advanced technology demonstration that can be employed on future crewed flight missions, like in the Artemis program and the Orion spacecraft. It was launched to ISS on a Dragon spacecraft on July 25, 2019, and began continuous operations on July 29, 2019. S.A.M. was returned to earth aboard SpaceX-25 on Jan. 24, 2022 after almost two years of continuous operations aboard the ISS, exceeding its design lifetime goal of one year. The instrument was returned to JPL on Feb. 15, 2022. This first S.A.M. instrument will be refurbished and be flown, along with a second S.A.M. unit, to ISS in late 2022. The two instruments operating at the same time will enable JPL scientists to continuously monitor the ISS cabin atmosphere for interesting or anomalous constituents and temporal or spatial variations in the cabin atmosphere.

References

{{reflist International Space Station Artemis program Spacecraft instruments

See also

References