Autonomous Planetary Liquid Sampler (APLS) for In Situ Sample Acquisition and Handling from Liquid Environments

Many natural and artificial liquid environments, such as rivers, oceans, lakes, water storage tanks, aquariums, and urban water distribution systems, are difficult to access. As a result, technology is needed to enable autonomous liquid sampling to monitor water quality and ecosystems. Existing in situ sample acquisition and handling systems for liquid environments are currently limited to a single use and are semi-autonomous, relying on an operator. Liquid sampling systems should be robust and light and withstand long-term operation in remote locations. The system components involved in liquid sampling should be sterilisable to ensure reusability. Here, we introduce a prototype of a liquid sampler that can be used in various liquid environments and may be valuable for the scientific characterisation of different natural, remote, and planetary settings. The Autonomous Planetary Liquid Sampler (APLS) is equipped with pre-programmed, fully autonomous extraction, cleaning, and sterilisation functionalities. It can operate in temperatures between -10 °C and 60 °C and pressure of up to 0.24 MPa (~24 m depth below mean sea level on Earth). As part of the control experiment, we demonstrate its safe and robust autonomous operation in a laboratory environment using a liquid media with Bacillus subtilis. A typical sampling procedure required 28 s to extract 250 mL of liquid, 5 s to fill the MilliQ water, 25 s for circulation within the system for cleaning and disposal, and 200 s to raise the system temperature from ~30 °C ambient laboratory temperature to 150 °C. The temperature is then maintained for another 3.2 h to sterilise the critical parts, allowing a setup reset for a new experiment. In the future, the liquid sampler will be combined with various existing analytical instruments to characterise the liquid solution and enable the autonomous, systematic monitoring of liquid environments on Earth.