The Pentagon’s Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded BAE Systems‘ Information & Electronic Systems division a $3.3 million contract under the Hyperadsorptive Atmospheric Sampling Technology program, which is aimed at developing a system that permits exhaustive, accurate, and economical collection of atmospheric trace constituents to support chemical mapping of urban and military environments. The system will demonstrate materials, packaging and extraction technologies that sample atmospheric impurities whose concentration ranges from 10 parts per trillion to 100 parts per trillion by volume from 100-liter atmospheres of gas in less than five minutes. In the second phase, a complete system that weighs less than one kilogram, including power, indexing for one hundred samples and GPS geo-location will be demonstrated.
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