Mars Drilling: Development of a 1 m Class Rotary-Percussive Drill for Mars Permafrost
Abstract
For more than a decade, Honeybee Robotics has been developing 1 m class drilling systems for acquisition of samples from subsurface of Mars to a depth of 1-2 m. That depth is mainly driven by the size of a drill that can fit onto a lander deck of Mars Phoenix/Viking size lander. A single drill string system is significantly less complex than a drill where drill pipes need to be attached (e.g. screwed) to extent the drilling depth.
The drilling system uses rotary-percussive approach for penetrating materials as hard as basalt. In soft materials, rotary drilling is often sufficient, but in hard materials, percussion is employed. Percussion also reduces drilling forces and energies, since penetration rate is higher with as opposed to without percussion. During the technology development, the drill has been tested in Mars vacuum chamber as well as at various analog field locations including Arctic, Greenland, Atacama, and Antarctica. The drill penetrated most formations to a 1 m depth within approximately 1 hour or less. The power required to drill was of the order of 100 Watts and the force required to drill was of the order of 100 N or less. To deliver samples to various instruments, we also developed pneumatic-based sample delivery, based on Honeybee Robotics PlanetVac system (PlanetVac has been selected as part of LSITP program to fly to the Moon onboard CLPS landers). The system uses compressed gas to move the sample from the drill all the way to various instruments. Depending on the instrument requirements, custom cups could be fabricated. As such, the sample delivery can be applied to GCMS, Raman, XRF, XRD, LDMS, NIR and many other instruments. The drill could also be integrated with non-contact instruments such as Neutron Spectrometer, Near Infrared Spectrometer, and Deep UV Raman. The drilling and sample delivery technology is at TRL 6. The latest system has been tested in lunar chamber (hard vacuum and 150K temperature) for Viper rover mission to the Moon. This represents more stringent environmental case than Mars.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.P41C3458P
- Keywords:
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- 1829 Groundwater hydrology;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 5215 Origin of life;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: ASTROBIOLOGY;
- 6225 Mars;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 6297 Instruments and techniques;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS