Advances in Mass Spectrometers for Flyby Space Missions for the Analysis of Biosignatures and Other Complex Molecules
Spacecraft flybys provide access to the chemical composition of the gaseous envelope of the planetary object.Typical relative encounter velocities range from km/s Mirror Mastics to tens of km/s in flybys.For speeds exceeding about 5 km/s, modern mass spectrometers analyzing the rapidly encountering gas suffer from intrinsic hypervelocity impact-ind