Urey instrument


The Urey instrument, or Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector was a developmental spacecraft instrument for detecting organic compounds including amino acids.

Overview

It was funded by NASA and tested in the Atacama Desert in the early 2000s. Urey was selected by NASA for further development in support ExoMars or any future Mars mission that could use Urey along with Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or Moma in 2007, funded with 1.5 million USD total . Urey was a suite of instruments that built on 15 years of research into detecting organic molecules.
Urey is named after Harold Clayton Urey for his contributions to chemistry and other studies including winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934.