...learned of the Murchinson Meteorite.

I hope this craft has a mass spec, but I don't see one in the graphic. It would be a shame to get there, a big part of the task, and risk losing data while trying to get back.

Thanks for the interesting post. I was unaware of this mission.

I presume the mission planners worked out the relative risks/technical challenges associated with sending an instrument to the asteroid vs. a sample return design.

You're right that it doesn't carry a mass spec; here's the web page detailing instrumentation (strangely, they include the ion drive here). But there will be some measurements made at the asteroid by the MASCOT lander, including a "hyperspectral infrared microscope for in situ mineralogical analyses of the ground."

...have access to all the world's best instrumentation, including AMS giving extremely high resolution.

Very high resolution was a key parameter in confirming that extraterrestrial origin of the amino acids in the Murchinson meteorite.

The instrument used at that time, which was a GC/C/IRMS was probably nowhere near as sensitive as what we have now, and we can get a lot of structural information with traps and the like.

And of course, the stereochemical analysis would be able to be conducted under idea conditions, conditions certainly better than what a GC can provide.

And finally there would be access to TEM and SEM images.

Still, it does seem like a huge gamble, to require getting to a small body with a low gravitational field, induce pulses of energy and then be sure to get the whole damned thing back.

I'm sure they're smarter than I am, however, and know what they're doing. One hopes so. Americans once lost a Mars mission because someone didn't covert english units to metric units. A catastrophic error is easy to make.

One hopes they will succeed. It would be a superb engineering achievement.