Compact UV Laser

To advance the in-situ instrument technologies and components focused on the detection of evidence of life, Q-Peak proposes to develop a UV laser with very low Size-Weight-and-Power that can be used for laser-desorption-mass-spectroscopy (LDMS) to detect bio-signatures. A miniature LDMS, has been developed for the Mars-Organic-Molecule-Analyzer (MOMA) instrument at NASA-GSFC for the ExoMars mission, expected to launch in 2020. The MOMA instrument has a UV laser that is at least three times bigger in size compared to the Q-Peak laser. The MOMA instrument can be used in future missions to Titan and Europa to study the tholins and icy water. For mission like Europa-lander a radiation hardened instrument is needed and in this program Q-Peak will make the suitable laser. The laser will have a modular form factor to produce 1064-nm as the fundamental wavelength and then frequency-upconvert in two stages; second-harmonic-generation to produce 532 nm and fourth-harmonic-generation 266-nm using the appropriate nonlinear crystals. When the laser is set to produce 532-nm, it is suitable to perform Raman-spectroscopy as a complementary analysis of organic molecules. When set to produce 1064-nm, it is suitable for laser-induced-breakdown-spectroscopy which is another technique to perform compositional analysis of organic/inorganic samples.