Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer

A new horizon for single-cell, quantitative, and translational proteomics

Looking to unlock additional insights into biology and disease mechanisms? With faster throughput, deeper coverage, higher sensitivity, and accurate and precise quantitation; the Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer enables you to dramatically expand the scale and scope of your experiments.

See how it sets a new standard for mass spectrometry performance and redefines what is possible for discovery and translational research to help you rapidly and comprehensively capture the dynamic, temporal, and spatial complexity of biology.

Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer resources

Explore 50+ scientific resources

See how the Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometer enables your research

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Featured on-demand webinars

Pushing the Frontiers of Mass Spectrometry by Alexander Makarov

How Mass Spectrometry innovation propels biological discovery

Single-cell proteomics on the Orbitrap Astral MS for the exploration of cell heterogeneity

Advancing Molecular Glue Discovery Through High Throughput Mass Spectrometry Based Proteomics

Featured applications

Single-cell proteomics

Reveal the full complexity of cellular diversity and experience deeper coverage from single cells at faster throughput with the Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer.

SCP and cellular diversity ›

Quantitative proteomics

Accurate and precise label-free quantitation using data-independent acquisition with the Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer.

Quantitative, TMT, and LFQ ›

Translational proteomics

The Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer offers new possibilities for translational proteomics with reproducible quantitation of thousands of proteins.

Discovery research to clinical ›

Other applications

The Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer is reshaping approaches to proteomic research in the fields of:

immunopeptidomics
chemoproteomics
phosphoproteomics

Key benefits

Faster throughput

Achieve faster throughput with a high throughput injection-to-injection cycle of just 8 minutes.

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In one day, analyze over 1.4 million protein groups from 180 samples

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Deeper coverage

The near whole-proteome coverage of these methods reduces the chances of missing out on important proteins of interest.

See more in less time or spend more time and go even deeper

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Double the depth and quadruple the throughput for phosphoproteomics

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Higher sensitivity

The high dynamic range of the proteome necessitates the measurement of not only high abundance proteins, but also proteins with just a few copies.

Deeper coverage from single cells at faster throughput

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Accurate and precise quantitation

Biological changes are quantitative in nature, requiring accurate and precise measurements to determine statistically significant biomarkers.

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The Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometer enables accurate and precise quantitation with 88% of identified proteins having 20% CV or less and 75% having 10% CV or less

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An overview of the Orbitrap Astral MS from Alexander Makarov, Ph.D.

The new Astral analyzer builds on Thermo Fisher Scientific’s proven Orbitrap mass spectrometry platform with novel technology to deliver up to two times deeper proteome coverage and up to four times more throughput compared to current mass spectrometers.

Alexander Makarov, Ph.D., Director Global Research LSMS, Thermo Fisher Scientific, claims the Astral analyzer represents a new class of high-resolution accurate-mass analyzers with a unique performance envelope.

"The introduction of the Astral analyzer represents a starting point in the future evolution of its technology to new frontiers of performance," said Makarov.

What customers are saying

A New Standard for Data-Independent Acquisition

Learn how the Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometer will enable precision medicine at scale with revolutionary new DIA methods for plasma proteomics.

The future of proteomics lies in the accurate and precise measurement of thousands of proteins across thousands of samples. Data-independent Acquisition (DIA) facilitates deep proteome coverage with high quantitative accuracy and precision using label-free quantitation (LFQ) due to the unbiased and reproducible nature of mass spectrometry measurements.

The Era of Single-Cell Proteomics Has Arrived

Single cell proteomics can determine the dynamic nature of the proteome across cell types in both time and space. The increased resolution that is gained by measuring single cells instead of bulk samples provides a deeper insight into disease mechanisms and fundamental biological processes to unravel the complexity of biology. Learn how the Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometer opens a new horizon for single-cell proteomics by empowering higher throughput and deeper coverage without sacrificing quantitative accuracy and precision.

Mike MacCoss, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington
Jennifer Van Eyk, Ph.D., Director, Basic Science Research, Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center Director, Advanced Clinical Biosystem Institute Center, Cedars-Sinai
Jesper Olsen, Ph.D., Deputy Center Director, Professor, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen
Qing Yu, Research Associate at Harvard Medical School

Erwin Schoof, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Section for Protein Science and Biotherapeutics, Cell Diversity Lab, Technical University of Denmark
Joshua Coon, Ph.D., Professor of Biomolecular Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Nikolai Slavov, Ph.D., Founding Director of Parallel Squared Technology Institute and Professor at Northeastern University
Sophia Steigerwald, Ph.D., Student at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry

How it works

The Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer combines three mass analyzers: a quadrupole mass analyzer for high selectivity and high ion transmission; an Orbitrap mass analyzer for high dynamic range and high-resolution measurements; and a novel Astral analyzer for fast and sensitive measurements. The front end, from the ion source up to the segmented quadrupole mass filter, is designed to maximize instrument sensitivity and robustness. Ions are trapped and concentrated in the ion routing multipole, which facilitates the transfer of ions to either of the high-resolution accurate-mass (HRAM) analyzers. Synchronization of ion transfer and processing throughout the instrument enables the parallel handling of five separate ion packets simultaneously. This synchronization enables each mass analyzer to be used in combination to optimize performance and experimental flexibility.

The Orbitrap analyzer is ideally suited for the acquisition of high dynamic range HRAM MS and MS² spectra, including an optional Biopharma mode to extend the mass range up to m/z 8,000. The Astral Mass Analyzer delivers high acquisition rates up to 200 Hz, single ion detection sensitivity, and high dynamic range HRAM SIM and MS² measurements that are fully synchronized with parallel Orbitrap analyzer operation. Due to this synchronization the Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer excels at many data acquisition strategies including High Resolution Data-Independent Acquisition (HR-DIA) and data-dependent acquisition (DDA). These acquisition strategies combined with the high resolution and dynamic range of the Orbitrap and Astral analyzers enable accurate and precise quantitation using either Label-Free Quantitation (LFQ) or multiplexing with Tandem Mass Tag (TMT)-labeled peptides.

Realize the promise of proteomics

See how the Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer helps overcome the challenges of insufficient throughput, missing analytes of interest, and the lack of sensitivity to propel the capabilities of proteomics forward for discovery and translational research.