NASA VIKING GCMS — The First Attempt to Detect Signs of Life on Mars

The Smithsonian has one, two are on Mars, and this is a flight spare, Serial Number 1-002, and Serial Number 0005 on its transportation structure.

From a NASA study: “Conducting gas chromatography and mass spectrometry in the laboratory was hard enough. In the early 1970s, building such an instrument as even a lab model required experts who could keep up with the latest developments in the field, since the science was changing on an almost-daily basis. The GCMS that Dr. Klaus Biemann, the leader of the molecular organic analysis team, had at MIT was the size of a room; its human operator could literally walk through it.

Shrinking the instrument to a mass of less than 15 kg that could fit in a 1’x1’x1’ box on a spacecraft, operate robotically, and survive the rigors of both the journey and the Martian atmosphere presented myriad challenges. At the time, the GCMS and the other Viking science experiments were the most difficult ones ever attempted by NASA.

A gas chromatograph uses a thin capillary fiber known as a column to separate different types of molecules, based on their chemical properties. Each type of molecule passes through the column at a different rate, resulting in each type emerging from the column in a defined sequence. The temperature of the column determines the rate of separation.

Once processed by the gas chromatograph, the molecules would then enter the mass spectrometer, which would evaluate and identify them by breaking each one into ionized fragments and detecting these fragments using their charge-to-mass ratio. This produced a unique profile of each compound that could be converted into a digital signal and transmitted to Earth.

Used together, these two components would offer a much finer degree of substance identification than either unit used separately. A working GCMS was absolutely critical to the organic analysis of the soil on Mars.”

I also did a recent video overview of the Viking Lander Biological Instrument (VLBI) and GCMS. All part of the Future Ventures’ 🚀 Space Collection.