
Dr Simeon Barber
Senior Research Fellow
Biography
Professional biography
Space missions enable us to explore other worlds...
...and along the way we can learn to understand and sustain our own.
Moon@OU is a team of scientists and engineers studying our nearest neighbour in space.
In the lab we analyse meteorites and returned samples to unravel the Moon's history.
And we fly miniaturised lab instruments on space missions to study new samples in new places on the Moon.
With international partners we study the water cycle that is happening on the Moon today, driven by hot days and cold nights.
And near the lunar South pole we will identify and quantify water ice and other chemicals that may have accumulated over billions of years.
We call this exploration science. Studying the history and processing of water on the Moon helps us understand the role of this precious substance in our solar system.
And if we can learn to carefully extract it in useful forms such as hydrogen and oxygen,
it could help humans live and work on the Moon and provide a stepping stone for new, affordable and sustainable missions to Mars.
We use the knoweldge and skills we learn in our space research to create benefits for society on Earth.
Research interests
- Exospheric Mass Spectrometer EMS / PITMS: PITMS was a payload on Astrobotic Peregrine Mission-1, which aimed to be the first US-built lander on the Moon since Apollo 17. PITMS was designed to study how a lunar water cycle might be driven by the hot daytime and cold night-time temperatures of the Moon’s surface. And how over millions of years this may contribute to vast stores of water and other molecules at permanently cold polar regions – molecules that could tell us the history of our own planet and might support human exploration of the solar system. However, soon after launch on 8 January 2024, the spaceraft developed a fault in its propulsion system. PITMS was therefore redirected to study the gases in and around the spacecraft, and gained valuable data about the instrument performance and lander ennvironment before the mission ended 8 days later with controlled re-entry above the Pacific Ocean. The instrument was led by Dr Barbara Cohen at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The OU, partnered by RAL Space and funded by ESA, developed the Exospheric Mass Spectrometer for PITMS and supported its scientific operations. The science and perofrmance demonstrated by the mission will feed into future flights of related payloads, including ProSPA and EMS-LUPEX (below).
- PROSPECT / ProSPA: The OU is leading the development of ProSPA, a miniature chemical laboratory for analysing samples for water and ice at the Moon. It is half of ESA's PROSPECT drilling and analysis package for a NASA CLPS mission which which aims to land near the south pole of the Moon. PROSPECT will carry out a detailed survey of how water and other molecules are distributed on and under the Moon’s surface. It will help us understand where these materials came from, and whether they might be harvested as useful resources. The OU is partnered in UK by RAL Space, Airbus Defence and Space, and Dynamic Imaging Analytics; in Germany we work with Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and Technical University of Munich. PROSPECT is led by Leonardo S.p.A. (Italy) under a programme of and funded by ESA.
- Drill-eye: a miniature camera mounted inside a drill that will allow scientists to see in real-time under the surface of the Moon or Mars. By picturing the inside of a bore-hole in real time, we capture valuable scientific information about sub-surface layering, ice content and partical size, that can be lost when a sample is excavated to the surface for anaysis.
- iDrill: an intrumented drill concept for rapid chemical and physical analysis of the lunar sub-surface
- Rosetta: our gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer "Ptolemy" made the first ever chemical composition measurements on the surface of a comet on 12 Nov 2014 on board the Philae comet lander [UK Space Agency/ESA]
- Beagle 2 GAP (Gas Analysis Package): our gas analysis instrument was delivered to Mars on 25 December 2003 by Beagle2 but regrettably the lander failed to fully deploy and operations did not proceed. But all was not in vain; what we learned is being put to use in ProSPA and EMS.
Projects
ProSPA CD CCN14 CLPS Conversion - Phase C/D1
THIS AMS PROJECT IS A CONTRACT CHANGE NOTICE (CCN) TO AMS PROJECT(688076) ProSPA Phase C/D [E-00070]-01 F5304]. THIS CCN PROVIDES ADDITIONAL INCOME TO OU, TO COVER THE LONGER PROJECT TIMESCALE THAT HAS RESULTED FROM THE CHANGE OF THE SPACECRAFT PROVIDER FROM RUSSIA TO NASA BECAUSE OF EVENTS IN UKRAINE. NO ADDITIONAL OBLIGATIONS ARE PLACED ON OU AS A RESULT OF THIS CCN: 1) It recovers 100% of the additional OU staff costs required 2) It recovers 100% of the additional OU non-staff costs required 3) It recovers 100% of the additional External Partner costs.
Sterilisation limits for sample return planetary protection measures
An ESA ITT to investigate through modelling and lab tests the level of potential biological contamination of Phobos surface material from martian impactors, in the framework of planetary protection.
Publications
Book Chapter
Application of penetrators within the solar system (2010)
Ptolemy - a GCMS to measure the chemical and stable isotopic composition of a comet (2009)
Journal Article
Quantitative evolved gas analysis: Winchcombe in comparison with other CM2 meteorites (2024)
A primordial noble gas component discovered in the Ryugu asteroid and its implications (2024)
A quantitative evolved gas analysis for extra-terrestrial samples (2020)
Searching for potential ice-rich mining sites on the Moon with the Lunar Volatiles Scout (2020)
On the attempts to measure water (and other volatiles) directly at the surface of a comet (2017)
Subsurface characterization of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko's Abydos site (2016)
Ptolemy operations at the surface of a comet, from planning to reality (2016)
CHO-bearing organic compounds at the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed by Ptolemy (2015)
L-VRAP-a lunar volatile resources analysis package for lunar exploration (2012)
Ptolemy operations and results during the Lutetia flyby (2012)
Penetrators for in situ subsurface investigations of Europa (2011)
Off-plane x-ray grating spectrometer camera for IXO (2010)
Developments of the off-plane x-ray grating spectrometer for IXO (2010)
LunarEX: a proposal to cosmic vision (2009)
Laboratory optimization of the Helium Carrier Gas Flow System of MODULUS Ptolemy (2009)
Presentation / Conference
LUVMI-X: A Versatile Platform for Resource Prospecting on the Moon (2021)
Characterisation of the LUVMI Lunar Volatiles Scout Instrument (2020)
Quantitative Evolved Gas Analysis of Apollo Lunar Soils (2020)
The ESA PROSPECT Payload for Luna 27: Development Status (2020)
LUVMI Rover to Characterise Volatile Content in Lunar Polar Regions (2019)
Mass Spectrometers for In-Situ Resource Utilisation (2019)
Volatile Characterisation Instrumentation for ISRU applications (2019)
In-Situ Studies of the Lunar Water Cycle by Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry (2019)
A quantitative evolved gas analysis for meteorite and lunar samples (2019)
Water Production from Lunar Samples and Simulants (2019)
Characterization of the Lunar Volatiles Scout for In-Situ Volatiles Extraction and Analysis (2019)
Characterisation of the LUVMI Volatile Extraction and Volatiles Analysis package (2019)
A Quantitative Evolved Gas Analysis for Lunar and Meteorite Materials (2019)
Penetrators as a deployment tool for Mass Spectrometer instrumentation (2018)
Hydrogen Reduction of Ilmenite in a Static System for a Lunar ISRU Demonstration (2018)
ProSPA: Analysis of Lunar Polar Volatiles and ISRU Demonstration on the Moon (2018)
Demonstration of Volatiles Extraction from NU-LHT-2M with the ProSPA Instrument Breadboard (2018)
Penetrator-deployed mass spectrometers for volatiles analysis at the Moon (2018)
Mobile In-Situ Exploration of Lunar Volatiles with the LVS on LUVMI (2018)
L-DART: A Penetrator Mission for Lunar Permanently Shadowed Regions (2018)
LUVMI – Volatile Extraction and Measurements in Lunar Polar Regions (2017)
PROSPECTing for Lunar Polar Volatiles: the ProSPA Miniature In-situ Science Laboratory (2017)
LUVMI: an innovative payload for the sampling of volatiles at the Lunar poles (2017)
Hydrogen reduction of ilmenite as an ISRU demonstration for ProSPA (2017)
Characterization of the Subsurface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's Abydos Site (2015)
Rosetta: The Final Furlong (2015)
Evolution of the subsurface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s Abydos Site (2015)
ProsPA: A miniature chemical laboratory for in-situ assessment of lunar volatile resources (2015)
First measurements of the surface composition of 67P using the Ptolemy mass spectrometer (2015)
Accessing and assessing lunar resources with PROSPECT (2014)
The operational plans for Ptolemy during the Rosetta mission (2014)
In situ cometary cosmochemistry (2013)
Ptolemy: preparations for scientific investigations at the surface of a comet (2013)
Ptolemy: operations to date as part of the Rosetta mission and plans for the comet encounter (2012)
Rosetta - ESA's comet lander mission (2012)
A mole deployed mass spectrometer for in-situ sub-surface volatile characterisation (2012)
Ptolemy: operations at 21 Lutetia as part of the Rosetta mission and future implications (2012)
The Lunar Volatile Resources Analysis Package (2012)
Searching for lunar water: the Lunar Volatile Resources Analysis Package (2012)
Compact CMOS camera demonstrator (C3D) for Ukube-1 (2011)
The ESA Lunar Lander and the search for Lunar Volatiles (2011)
ESA lunar lander's search for volatiles (2011)
Asteroidal atmospheres: a new subject area (2011)
In situ analytical chemistry for the future exploration of Titan (2010)
Isotope measurements of a comet by the Ptolemy instrument on Rosetta (2010)
Ptolemy operations in anticipation of the flyby of asteroid 21 Lutetia (2010)
Lunar science below the surface - the MoonLITE Low Cost Penetrator Mission (2009)
A penetrator deployed biogeochemistry package for the Europan surface (2009)
Isotope measurements of a comet by the Ptolemy instrument on Rosetta (2009)
MoonLITE programmatic and technological update (2009)
MoonLITE – Technological feasibility of the penetrator concept (2008)
Miniaturised mass spectrometery for future space flight applications (2007)
Kinetic penetrators for exploration of solar system bodies (2007)
Integrated sampling and mass spectrometer systems for Venus probe and balloon missions (2006)
Beagle 2: Mission to Mars — current status (2004)
In-situ chemical and isotopic analysis of a comet by Ptolemy (2003)