Description: This proposal addresses the need for advanced analytical methods and instrumentation to detect trace levels of chemical and biological contaminants directly on spacecraft and related surfaces to comply with Contamination Control and Planetary Protection requirements in an effort to preserve sample science integrity for life detection investigations on Europa, Enceladus, Mars, etc. The proposed methods employ non-contact deep UV Raman and fluorescence chemical imaging and mapping methods to avoid the need for any contact with spacecraft and related surfaces. The method eliminates the use of traditional sample collection methods such as swabs, wipes, or other methods, which have been shown to back-contaminate spacecraft surfaces as well as collected samples. Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy with excitation in the deep UV below 250 nm enables separation of the spectral regions of both Raman and fluorescence emissions, enabling collection of Raman emissions without obscuration by fluorescence from chemicals of interest as well as many spacecraft materials and from trace organic contamination within field of view of the Raman detection optics. This cannot be accomplished with excitation at longer wavelength including 263 nm or 266 nm from 4th harmonic Nd based lasers. Combining Raman and fluorescence methods in the deep UV enhances the ability to detect and identify the trace chemical or biological materials on these surfaces and have a proven ability to detect biological and other particles and materials on surfaces less than 1 pg, the mass of a single bacterial spore, with dimensions as small as 200 nm. These methods were first developed under funding from NASA Planetary Protection, but were advanced by contracts with several Department of Defense organizations well as commercial developments with both Pfizer Pharmaceutical and DuPont for chemical and biological cleaning validation of their manufacturing equipment.

Benefits: The instrumentation and methods proposed here have a broad range of potential applications for NASA as well as commercially. For NASA, the effort proposed here has directly applicability to a wide range of trance chemical and biological surface contamination related to Planetary Protection and other sensitive surface contamination applications. For Planetary Protection the application is not only for non-contact cleaning validation of spacecraft surfaces but also of cleaning validation of facilities to build spacecraft and store samples such as sample caches, etc. Other critical applications of this technology is for detection of contamination on optical and other surfaces where trace levels of chemical or biological materials cannot be tolerated. This technology is also adaptable to detection of trace contaminants in liquids such as water or cleaning or processing solvents.

Typical non-NASA commercial applications of the technology being developed here would include chemical and biological surface contamination for the cleaning validation of manufacturing equipment used in the pharmaceutical, food, chemical, semiconductor industries as well a product quality testing for these industries. Further applications apply to medical industries including hospital surgeries cleaning validation as well as environmental monitoring of water, air, soil, and a myriad of other applications where small spot sizes or photon-energy-specific excitation is needed or enabling.