Customer storyUniversity of Melbourne
Chemistry for a Martian moon: how a geochemist captures his lab work with Bower
Hugo Gouilloux is developing a chemistry to measure iron, copper and zinc isotopes in milligram-scale samples, with the MMX mission to Phobos in sight. With Bower, he captures contamination-sensitive work hands-free by talking through it in French, keeps every deviation on the record and turns a week of Excel work into a single request.
- Researcher
- Hugo Gouilloux
- Field
- Isotope geochemistry
- Organization
- University of Melbourne
“You touch your sample and don't pay much attention. Ten months later you don't remember it, and you're asking, what's happening? I have a problem with my data.”
At a glance
Two days at the fume hood, captured hands-free
He talked through two days of contamination testing in French, and Bower transcribed it into an English record.
Every deviation on the record
A changed volume, said out loud, is captured the moment it happens, ready to check against the limits later.
Figures from one request a week → one request
A calculation and figure that took a whole week in Excel came back from Bower as a finished chart.
The situation
Milligrams of sample, no room for contamination
Hugo Gouilloux is a PhD student in a collaborative program between the University of Melbourne, the University of Tokyo and JAXA, which trains researchers for missions like MMX: the JAXA-led international mission, with NASA, CNES, DLR, ASA and ESA, to bring back samples from Phobos, one of Mars's moons. His chemistry is destructive and the material allocated for this work is drastically reduced, so he is developing a method optimized for small samples that can later be used with confidence on Phobos samples once they are back on Earth.
Similar chemistries used 25 to 50 mL of acid in 1999. Recent ones use 10 to 15 mL, mostly to purify a single element, and the most efficient multi-element method (2015) needs at least 20 mL. Hugo's method cuts that to about 8 mL across three elements: copper, iron and zinc.
At this scale, contamination can come from almost anywhere, including his own gloves, wipes and mask, so he is measuring the contaminant load each one adds.
The challenges
Hands on the experiment, all day
The glove and wipe tests took two full days under a fume hood. Picking up a phone to take a photo or a note risked adding the very contamination he was measuring.
Small changes add up
Developing a chemistry means rerunning it with small changes, often a month apart. A 5 mL step used instead of 4 mL is easy to forget within two weeks, and the next run can drift past the limit with nothing to explain why.
A week in Excel for one figure
The figure showing the iron, copper and zinc fractions from one chemistry took a whole week of calculation and charting by hand.
What changed
Hugo runs the chemistry. Bower keeps the record.
Hugo decides where to cut a column, which acid to use and whether a volume is within the limit. Bower captures what he says as he works, keeps each deviation where he can check it and turns his numbers into figures.
01Capture
A full record, hands-free
His phone sat in the corner of the lab in live mode while he worked at the fume hood. He talked through each step in French, and Bower transcribed it into an English record.
02Deviations
Every question on the record
When he asks out loud, "Is 5 mL instead of 4 mL a bad thing?", the question is captured with the experiment. He checks it against his calculations later, straight from the record.
03Analysis
From a week in Excel to one request
He gave Bower the data. Bower ran the calculations and produced the finished figure, with each fraction in its own color.
“In a written protocol, I can explain how to tune an instrument, but I can't show when it is valid or not. Videos are a better way of showing what is actually happening and expected.”