Discriminating Abiotic and Biotic Signatures in Ocean-World Ice via Impact Ionization Mass Spectrometry

To the point

Fabian Klenner and colleagues demonstrate that impact ionization mass spectrometry can distinguish abiotic from biotic fingerprints of amino acids and fatty acids in ice grains ejected from ocean worlds, because soft ionization at encounter speeds around 4–6 km/s preserves the relative abundances of intact molecules, enabling discrimination even in salty matrices with detection limits in the μM to nM range that improve with higher salinity, and with larger molecules surviving better when protected by a frozen water matrix, offering a practical approach for future ocean‑world missions.