EMILI: Europan Molecular Indicators of Life Investigation

The Europan molecular indicators of life investigation (EMILI) is an instrument investigation designed to address the top science objectives of a future Europa lander mission, such as documented by the recent Europa Lander Science Definition Team (SDT). EMILI seeks to detect and characterize potential organic molecular biosignatures, which may be present only at ultralow (nM) concentrations. EMILI also characterizes key aspects of the mineralogical context of the samples collected from the Europan near-subsurface to discern the provenance and degree of radiative or oxidative processing they have undergone. Here we present selected EMILI instrument features, including recent prototype mass spectrometer (MS) developments, and preliminary results.