One of the great challenges of the study of extra-terrestrial materials is discriminating the indigenous signatures from terrestrial contamination. For this reason much of the processing of samples and all curation is performed in dedicated clean rooms. Within the Robert Hooke Building there are three clean room suites, one on each floor, supporting different areas of activity.
Sample Curation Facility: A suite of labs covering approx 60m2 that is the main facility for handling and storage of meteorite, lunar and other extra-terrestrial samples. The main area of 30m2 operates well in excess of Class 1000 and is supported by a Class 10000 Chemistry. Cleaner conditions are found within two Class 100 rooms, one of which includes a clean air bench which essentially eliminates all particles larger than 0.3 microns.
Clean Fabrication Facility: In order to meet the requirements of spaceflight instrumentation as well as the need to control contamination for some of the experiments we have a 50m2 facility, comprising a Class 1000 fabrication room supported by a Class 10000 chemistry, preparation and control laboratory.
Clean Petrography Suite: Characterisation of samples prior to analyses on the front line mass spectrometer systems or other instruments elsewhere is essential – and it is important that this is performed without compromise to the samples wherever possible. Therefore, the main optical microscope systems, laser Raman microprobe and UV-Vis Microspectrophotometer are housed in a 45m2 Class 10000 clean room facility.
Preparing a sample in a clean room
