WEEVIL: design and commissioning of an ice-sublimation chamber and a cryogenic submillimeter radiometer for studying rarefied gas plumes

We present WEEVIL (WatEr Emission of Vapor from Ice in the Laboratory), an experimental facility developed to study ice sublimation under laboratory conditions to support observations of comets and icy moons. The setup combines a submillimeter heterodyne radiometer and a high-vacuum cryogenic chamber, enabling spatially and temporally resolved monitoring of gas plumes formed during ice sublimation under controlled laboratory conditions. This paper describes the facility’s design and implementation. Furthermore, we present the commissioning of the experimental setup, including the first water-vapor spectra acquired during an ice sublimation experiment.