Atmospheric Sample Collector - take "soil" samples of the air

[thereaverofdarkness]

could be neat to have a part you could unlock that woould let you gather the air. It could have different "biomes" for different altitudes, peraps even more than just the already existing "over the surface", "low atmosphere", and "high atmosphere". On Earth and presumably on Kerbin as well, there could be individual readings from:

upper ionosphere and exosphere too thin to contain a sample

7.) ionosphere - gas/plasma mix and interactions

6.) cold mesosphere/ionosphere boundary

5.) mesosphere - noble gases?

4.) hot stratosphere/mesosphere boundary

3.) stratosphere/ozone

2.) cold troposphere/stratosphere boundary

1.) ground/low (troposphere)

edit: would be nice if these apply as biomes for thermometer and barometer as well!

[KvickFlygarn87]

+1 for this, really great idea! But do we want more science before balancing the current system? Food for thought.

[Murph]

The existing science nosecone kinda does this. Your suggestion might contain some idea for how it could be improved.

[thereaverofdarkness]

The existing science nosecone kinda does this. Your suggestion might contain some idea for how it could be improved.

I love keeping what we have and making them do more things. Perhaps the nosecone comes with the ability to hold atmosphere in it for its initial purpose of scanning it, and upon realizing that the atmosphere is more complex than originally expected, scientists figure out how to repurpose the already existing module for use as an air sample collector.