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Devices & Data

Special equipment housed in the physics department includes:

  • Balloon-borne cosmic ray detectors
  • A scintillating fiber development laboratory
  • NanoSIMS
  • Auger Nanoprobe
  • Scanning and transmission electron microscopes
  • Five noble-gas mass spectrometers
  • A high precision thermal ionization source mass spectrometer
  • A Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer
  • A modified Cameca IMS-3F ion microprobe
  • An optical microscope laboratory for nuclear track studies
  • A variety of laboratory equipment for preparing and observing solid samples
  • A variety of computer facilities
  • The department also houses machine and glassblowing shops and the physics library.

Special equipment housed in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department includes:

  • An X-ray diffractometer
  • Two laser Raman microprobes with a multichannel analyzer
  • Detectors for neutron activation analysis
  • Gas-mixing furnaces and diamond anvil presses for experimental petrology
  • An automated X-ray fluorescence analyzer
  • A field reflectance spectrometer with attachments for optical depth and sky radiance measurements
  • A nuclide luminoscope
  • A twelve-channel exploration seismograph
  • A portable broad-band seismograph and digital acquisition system
  • A gas chromatograph equipped with FID/TCD, BET surface analyzer
  • Advanced spectropolarimetric imaging and mapping instruments for remote sensing (e.g. Fabry-Perot interferometer spectrometers)
  • Three solid-source mass spectrometers
  • A stable isotope mass spectrometer
  • An inductively coupled plasma/mass spectrometer
  • JEOL JXA 8200 Electron Microprobe
  • A Zeiss Aeroscope with phase contrast and epifluorescence optics and Axiocam digital camera
  • A Tekmar-Dohrmann Apollo 2000 High Sensitivity Combustion TOC Analizer
  • A portable weather station
  • GTS, an electric resistivity system and 
  • A distributed, interactive image-processing facility.

The Earth & Planetary Sciences department has copies of all NASA images of Mars, Mercury, Venus and the Moon, a complete set of Mars Global Surveyor data, and data from other lunar, planetary, and earth-orbiting space exploration missions. The department houses the lead Geosciences node for NASA's Planetary Data System and hosts a NASA-sponsored Regional Planetary Image Facility. It also houses an electronics shop and a rock-sawing and polishing facility.  McDonnell Center research utilizes many other items from the above departments as well as specialized equipment in the biology and chemistry departments, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Medicine, and Washington University's central computer facilities.

In addition, Center personnel use specialized facilities in other locations, including ion accelerators (Brookhaven National Laboratory and the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory), ion implantation devices (University of Paris), and planetary mission operations facilities at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena).