Concept evaluation of Mars drilling and sampling instrument

The search for possible extinct or existing life is the goal of the exobiology investigations to be undertaken during future Mars missions. As it has been learnt from the NASA Viking, Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rover mission, sampling of surface soil and rocks can gain only limited scientific information. In fact, possible organic signatures tend to be erased by surface processes (weathering, oxidation and exposure to UV radiation from the Sun). The challenge of the missions have mostly been getting there; only roughly one third of all Mars missions have reached their goal, either an orbit around the planet, or landing to the surface. The two Viking landers in the 1970's were the first to touch down the soil of Mars in working order and performing scientific studies there. After that there was a long gap, until 1997 the Pathfinder landed safely on the surface and released a little rover, the Sojourner. In 2004 other rovers came: the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and a while after that, the sister rover Opportunity. These five successful landings are less than half of all attempts to land on Mars. Russia, Europe and the United States have all had their landers, but Mars is challenging. Even Mars orbit has been tough to reach by many nation's orbiters. It is then understandable that of these five successful landings, performed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), there have not yet been very complicated mechanical deep-drilling instruments onboard. The risks to get there are great, and the risk of malfunctioning of a complicated instrument there is also high. Another reason to avoid a deep-driller from the lander payload is simply the mass constrains. A drill is a heavy piece of payload, and the mass allocations for scientific instruments are small. In the launch window of 2009, both European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have their plans to send a rover to Mars. Both of them will include some means to analyse the subsurface material. ESA's rover, called the ExoMars rover, will carry a deep-driller onboard in its Pasteur payload. At the time of writing this thesis, an exact definition of the Pasteur drill has not yet been defined. The author of this thesis has studied the driller instruments in his past work projects and in his doctoral studies. The main focus of this thesis is to analyse the feasibility of different drill configurations to fit to the requirements of the ExoMars' Pasteur payload drill by using the information gathered from the past projects. In this thesis, the author introduces a new concept of a robotic driller, called the MASA drill. The MASA drill fulfils the needs for the drill instrument onboard the Pasteur payload. The main study in this thesis concentrates on design work of the MASA drill, as well as analysis of its operation and performance capabilities in the difficult task of drilling and sampling.reviewe

Enabling technologies for the subsurface exploration of the solar system

Future robotic exploration missions within the Solar System, focussing on either scientific discovery or the emerging field of In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU), shall require the development of technologies which are capable of exploring to ever-greater depths beneath the planetary surface. In order to achieve these ambitious goals, advances in the existing state of the art in robotic sampling are required. This Ph.D. presents findings on the development of novel solutions within this field. The development of the Ultrasonic Planetary Core Drill (UPCD), a system based upon the ultrasonic-percussive drill technique, was designed with a Mars Sample Return (MSR) objective at the core of the development. Breakthroughs in autonomous control and the robotic assembly of drill strings were required in order to meet the requirements set. The system was tested at Coal Nunatak, Antarctica, in December 2016. A rotary-percussive drilling system for use in extracting subglacial bedrock samples from Earth’s Polar Regions was developed. Making use of technologies devised in the UPCD project, this collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) required a low resource approach to the problem in order to ensure compatibility with existing BAS systems and logistical constraints. Building upon technologies developed and confidence generated in previous systems, the subglacial bedrock was industrialised into what became the Percussive Rapid Access Isotope Drill (P-RAID). This system underwent initial field trials at the Skytrain Ice Rise, Antarctica in January 2019 with the intention to further develop the system for full deployment

Coring Planetary Ices; Their Thermomechanical Behaviour

Spacecraft missions are underway that will mechanically probe the material found at the surface of cometary nuclei. Little is known about the physical properties of these bodies and how their surface material will respond to a probe's sampling mechanisms. Tools such as rotating drills or hammering bits can cause the otherwise pristine material to be damaged and heated. This work addresses the phenomenon of tool-induced heating and examines the properties of ices in three planetary environments in which such coring processes may occur. A unique drilling system has been built to provide data on the thermal response of ices under space-like conditions. Cold (-150 K) samples of water ice and carbon dioxide ice have been formed from the vapour phase and cored with an instrumented cutting head under low pressures. The effort used to core these ices has been measured as a function of temperature, coring speed, and depth rate. Three broad conclusions can be drawn from these experiments. 1) Carbon dioxide ice grown from its vapour at 150 K requires approximately one third of the mechanical effort needed to core or drill the same volume of water ice at a given rate at the same temperature. 2) The power needed to drive a coring tool through water ice at a fixed rotation speed and a given vertical rate trebles as the ice's temperature falls from 240 to 140 K. Specific cutting energies greater than 55 J m-3 have been recorded for ice at 140 K, and dense carbon dioxide at the same temperature has been shown to have one half of that strength displayed by water ice. 3) Mechanical effort is mostly converted into heat in a coring process. Temperature rises of at least 10 K have been measured in dense samples of cryogenic (-140 K) carbon dioxide ice around a coring tool that operated with power levels of no more than 2 W. For the same applied power, water ices are expected to display one third of this temperature rise seen when coring void-free carbon dioxide ice at the same temperature. The magnitude of this heating effect is assessed for a comet sampling tool on the Rosetta comet lander. It is expected that temperature rises of a few degrees will occur in water-ice rich material retrieved by the tool if the comet, at depths of several tens of centimetres, shows little porosity. It is also suggested that higher temperatures will be developed by extracting material from greater depths, where carbon dioxide may be present as a void-free ice

Enabling exploration : the lunar outpost and beyond

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together academic, governmental, and private sector interests to discuss progress in lunar exploration, share ideas and information, and form collaborations. It will be an opportunity to integrate diverse interests in lunar exploration to reduce risk and cost of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon through novel and innovative ideas, technologies, and partnerships.Lunar and Planetary Institute, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lunar Exploration Analysis Groupconveners, Clive Neal, Stephen MackwellPARTIAL CONTENTS: Reducing the Risk, Requirements, and Cost of the Human Exploration Phase of the Constellation Program with Robotic Landers and Rovers / D.A. Kring -- Hydrogen: A Strategy for Assessing the Key Element for the Lunar Outpost / J. Plescia, P. Spudis, B. Bussey, R. Elphic, S. Nozette, and A. Phipps -- Aristarchus Plateau as an Outpost Location / B.L. Jolliff and J. Zhang -- Commercial Development of the Moon: The Great Lunar Depository / D.S. McKay -- Scientific and Resource Characterization of Lunar Regolith Using Dielectric Spectroscopy / D.E. Stillman and R.E. Grimm