The technology development in this project directly addresses NASA's needs of increasing instrument resolution, precision and sensitivity for planetary missions. The proposed technology is designed for in situ characterization of organic compounds at real time with advantages of compact, light, low power (SWaP) and flexibility. This technology also can be used other NASA space and ground programs for chemical detection and monitoring. Addition to characterization of organic compounds, the technology can be used to detect other element composites. Most importantly, the proposed approach offers a flexible and low cost scheme to ensure the accurate, reliability, and integrity to planetary mission success.
The low-cost of the technology will help the technology enter the commercial, military, and industrial markets. The proposed technologies could be directly applied to similar applications operated by other government and commercial enterprises. For example, industries can benefit from chemical monitoring, environmental protection can benefit from chemical detection and contamination monitoring, medical applications can benefit from biomarker tracking, and military can benefit from detection of explosive materials and chemical agents.
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