Determine the initial amino-acid inventory at Oxia Planum

Determine the initial amino-acid inventory at Oxia Planum, particularly the initial concentration of serine and other candidate chiral amino acids relevant to ExoMars Rosalind Franklin measurements.

Background

The radiation-preservation calculations require an assumed initial concentration, with 1000 ppmw used as an illustrative baseline rather than an observation. The modeled concentrations needed for surviving material and measurable enantiomer peaks substantially exceed several meteoritic measurements, but those measurements cannot be directly transferred to the original martian inventory because of processing, contamination, site, age, and molecular-pool differences.

Consequently, determining the initial abundance of amino acids in the Oxia Planum host material is necessary to assess whether the modeled preservation and detectability boundaries correspond to material actually available to the rover.