Baldrick - Large Clean Circular Chamber

Photo of "Baldrick" Large Clean Circular Chamber

Mirandah Ackley (Freie Universität Berlin PhD student) with her frozen samples to expose to UV, low temperature and low pressure within the Baldrick chamber

The Large Clean Circular Chamber “Baldrick” provides a ‘clean’ flat-bottomed testbed for astrobiological exposure experiments to extreme environments, such as variable vacuum pressure, temperature and UV simulated environments. The chamber was purchased for the International Bilateral Fund: COSPAR PPP project awarded to AstrobiologyOU in 2023.

Description

Baldrick is a clean circular chamber with a flat base. It is 60 cm in diameter and 20 cm tall. It benefits from a large spring-loaded top lid opening the full diameter of the chamber. The top lid hosts various portholes, ideal for UV illumination, including 4 small (CF63 68 mm), and one large (CF200 197 mm). The chamber wall is equipped with five KF50 ports for various feedthroughs. It can operate at pressures down to 10^-5 mbar, at temperatures between -100 °C and +200 °C. The chamber has a rolling frame to align three deuterium UV light sources over three of the four top CF63 VPZL-450Q viewports. Cryogenic feedthroughs allow for the circulation of liquid nitrogen through a large 400 mm diameter Copper cold plate, and electronic feedthroughs allow for multiple thermocouples.

Specification

Diameter	0.6 m
Height	0.2 m
Pressure	10^-5 mbar - 1000 mbar
Temperature	-100°C - +200°C

The Large Clean Circular Chamber “Baldrick” has:

UV solar simulation
Large copper cold plate
Automated temperature control
Automated pressure control

Recent projects

Three UV lamps positioned over three of four viewports on the top of Baldrick chamber to irradiate samples within under ambient, vacuum and/or low temperature conditions

2023-25: IBF COSPAR PPP project – a project to develop a new probabilistic approach to Planetary Protection. The chamber has been used to investigate the survival of microorganisms collected from clean rooms to vacuum ± low temperature ± UV sterilisation conditions.