image: The University of Leicester team, left to right: Charlotte Bouldin, Andy Cheney, Chris Hewitt, John Holt, Professor John Bridges, Sunny Sachdev, Lukas Adam, Dr Sam Roberts, Dr Graeme Hansford, Adam White, Dr Daniel Hao.
Credit: University of Leicester
Work has begun to design and build a Double-Walled Isolator (DWI), akin to an ultra-clean miniature laboratory to safely store and analyse extra-terrestrial materials, such as the first material from Mars.
University of Leicester scientists have passed a key European Space Agency review, and now will proceed to design the Qualification Model of a Double-Walled Isolator that could handle and curate samples from a Mars Sample Return mission.
The €5 million project will see a team working at Space Park Leicester, the University’s pioneering £100 million science and innovation park, to design, build and test the system.
The Double Walled Isolator is effectively a miniature laboratory designed to store and handle returned extra-terrestrial samples, and notionally samples from Mars, at a high level of containment and cleanliness. It is vital to avoid cross-contamination to properly study the precious samples and so the DWI will be designed to drastically reduce interactions with human beings by using state of the art robotics.
A robotic arm and other manipulation technologies will be used to move the samples around the inert gas environment of the DWI so that samples can be analysed by an optical microscope and a Raman spectrometer to provide information about the chemistry and geology of the rock material.
Initially developed in the framework of Mars Sample Return (MSR), this project also builds on previous work that the Leicester team has undertaken in designing a prototype Double Walled Isolator. For the Qualification Model, the Leicester team will be involving a diverse array of subject matter experts from the Open University, the Francis Crick Institute, Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum. Extract Technologies in Huddersfield are the industrial partner for the project who will provide detailed design and manufacture of the main isolator. Their expertise is in building advanced isolator technologies for the nuclear and pharmaceutical and medical industry, which has similar technical challenges of containment and cleanliness.
The team has now successfully completed a System Requirements Review, which closes the first formal phase of the project and it is now moving on to the design phase.
Andrew Cheney, DWI QM Project Manager at Space Park Leicester, said: “The SRR is a major milestone for the project that shows that we’ve fully understood the customer need, and translated that into a set of requirements to proceed with confidence into the design phase. Generating a good set of requirements is arguably the hardest part of any project and takes a lot of research, analysis and industry expertise. Now we have that agreed baseline, we look forward to the design phase and the many, many challenges it will bring for this unique piece of equipment.
“We have a relatively compressed period now to push a concept through to detail design and manufacture. The dedicated qualification phase will involve simulating end-to-end curatorial and scientific processing of martian analogue samples at SPL.”
John Holt, DWI QM Principal Investigator at Space Park Leicester, said: “Whether or not an astronaut or a robotic spacecraft brings samples back from Mars, the Double Walled Isolator (DWI) is a key UK technology that enables planetary scientists to scrutinise returned rocks to understand the martian environment and if there is microscopic evidence for life on the red planet. The milestone review [SRR] we have just conducted carefully looked at the complex needs of scientists to ensure we design an ultra-clean system that allows them to handle the precious samples and use a wide range of analytical techniques to unlock the secrets within each piece of rock. Out of this world projects are only possible with the right team and that is what we have here at Space Park Leicester, with our industry partner, Extract Technology, and scientific collaborators at the Open University, the Francis Crick Institute, Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum.”
Darren Hughes, Managing Director of Extract Technology Ltd, said: “I am delighted that DEC Group Extract Technology have been chosen as the partner of choice for Space Park Leicester in the design, development and manufacture of the DWI.
“Working in collaboration with world leading academics and scientific experts, as well as leveraging our decades of experience and knowledge in providing true end to end solutions in environments that require levels of extremely high containment.
“We are as equally proud that the final design will be built at our UK facility in Huddersfield, a testament to the skills and expertise within our business to enable us to deliver on such a prestigious project.”