The Sample Analysis Laboratory at DLR at the core of a new curation and analysis facility in Berlin

Laboratory measurements of extra-terrestrial materials like meteorites and ultimately materials from sample return missions can significantly enhance the scientific return of the global remote sensing data. This motivates the ongoing addition of a dedicated Sample Analysis Laboratory (SAL) to complement the work of well-established facilities like the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory (PSL) and the Astrobiology Laboratories within the Department of Planetary Laboratories at DLR, Berlin. SAL is being developed in preparation to receive samples from sample return missions such as JAXA Hayabusa 2 and MMX missions, the Chinese Chang-E 5 and 6 missions as well as the NASA Osiris-REX mission. SAL will be focusing on spectroscopic, geochemical, mineralogical analyses at microscopic level with the ultimate aim to derive information on the formation and evolution of planetary bodies and surfaces, search for traces of organic materials or even traces of extinct or extant life and presence of water.

SAL will be set up in a cleanroom environment, and equipped with a vis-IR-microscope (Bruker Hyperion 2000), a Malvern Panalytical Empyrean X-ray diffraction (XRD) system with Bragg-Brentano geometry which can be switched to parallel beam geometry, equipped with a Cu Kα source, 1Der detector and automated incident beam optics, a Field Emission – scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), a JEOL iHP200F Field Emission – electron microprobe analyzer (FE-EMPA), petrographic and stereo microscopes, and a glovebox. All samples will be stored under nitrogen gas and dedicated nitrogen filled shuttles will be used for transporting samples between the instruments to avoid them to enter in contact with the external environment.

In collaboration with the Natural History Museum in Berlin, SAL will also have the expertise and facilities for carrying out curation of sample return material which will be made available for the whole European scientific community. DLR is already curating a 0.45 mg of Lunar regolith collected from the Luna 24 Soviet mission and the first analyses of the material are being planned. SAL will be a distributed European sample analysis and curation facility as discussed in the preliminary recommendation of EuroCares. Like other laboratory facilities at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research (such PSL and RMBL) which are part of the Europlanet RI, the new SAL will be from the start open to the scientific community. Our goal is to establish, also thanks to the support from the Geo.X research network, an excellence centre for sample analysis in Berlin within the next 5-10 years building on our collaborations with the Natural History Museum in Berlin, the Helmholtz Centre Berlin and local universities.