PI : Erwin Dehouck
The ExaaMars facility (Experimental Alteration Applicable to Mars) consists primarily of a glovebox-type manipulation chamber in which mineral and rock samples can be experimentally altered at various water-to-solid ratios. The internal atmosphere of the chamber is kept anoxic (<1 ppm O2) and the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) can be set between 0 and 1 bar (in mixture with N2). This enables to reproduce the range of pCO2 values that existed on Mars during the Noachian and Hesperian era, and thus to characterize and predict the mineralogical markers of the early Martian water cycle.