Reaching 1 m Deep on Mars: The Icebreaker Drill

• DOI: 10.1089/ast.2013.1038
• Publication Date: 2013-12-04T12:42:38Z
• Authors: K. Zacny; G. Paulsen; C.P. McKay; B. Glass; A. Davé; A.F. Davila; M. Marinova; B. Mellerowicz; J. Heldmann; C. Stoker; N. Cabrol; M. Hedlund; J. Craft
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; Ice; 0103 physical sciences; Mars; Space Flight; 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences

The future exploration of Mars will require access to the subsurface, along with acquisition samples for scientific analysis and ground-truthing water ice mineral reserves in situ resource utilization. Icebreaker drill is an integral part mission concept search life ice-rich regions on Mars. Since targets Special Regions as defined by Committee Space Research (COSPAR), has meet appropriate cleanliness standards requested NASA's Planetary Protection Office. In addition, carries life-detection instruments; turn, sample delivery system have stringent contamination requirements prevent false positives. This paper reports development testing drill, a 1 m class rotary-percussive triple redundant system. acquires subsurface short, approximately 10 cm bites, which makes sampling robust prevents thawing phase changes target materials. Autonomous drilling, acquisition, transfer been successfully demonstrated analog environments Arctic Antarctic Dry Valleys, well environmental chamber. all environments, shown perform at "1-1-100-100" level; that is, it drilled depth hour less than 100 N weight bit W power. substrate varied included pure ice, regolith without rocks 2% perchlorate, whole rocks. currently Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5. next-generation weighs kg, representative flightlike model TRL 5/6. Key Words: Drilling—Sampling—Mars—Mars drilling—Subsurface exploration—Ice—Search life. Astrobiology 13, 1166–1198. Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Martian Near Subsurface: Experience from Past Missions 3. Considerations When Designing Drill Surface Operations 3.1. Science drivers 3.2. Environmental 3.3. protection 3.4. 4. 4.1. Drilling 4.2. Selecting best drilling method 4.3. Sample type 4.4. Components 4.4.1. Deployment boom 4.4.2. Z-stage 4.4.3. head 4.4.4. auger 4.4.5. 4.4.6. Brushing station 4.5. software 4.5.1. Mission-critical events 4.5.2. Mission-noncritical 4.6. science instrument Acquisition 6. Delivery 6.1. Five-DOF arm scoop 6.2. Pneumatic 6.3. Three-DOF-DOF 7. Tests 7.1. Test environment 7.2. Testing chamber 7.3. sites Antarctica 8. Next-Generation Icebreaker: Icebreaker2 9. Conclusions Acknowledgments Abbreviations References