WorldWide Drilling Resource

Designing a Drill for Use in Space Adapted from a Press Release by Honeybee Robotics Honeybee Robotics is beginning a new phase of development of its Planetary Deep Drill, a lightweight and portable drill designed to reach below the surface of icy formations in the Martian polar caps, Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, or Jupiter’s moon, Europa. After validating the drill’s performance in laboratory tests, the company is now conducting field trials at a gypsum quarry, where rock formations provide conditions similar to drilling through future planetary tar- gets. At USG Corporation’s gypsum quarry near the Salton Sea in California, Honeybee will select a formation of rock with strength similar to cryogenic ice. Engineers are targeting drilling to a depth of 100 feet, which will test the major functions of the drill and provide data for future improvements, including embedding additional sensors for “sensing-while-drilling” and in-situ experiments. “Over the last two decades, Honeybee has developed dozens of approaches to planetary drilling and sampling. The Planetary Deep Drill is especially exciting because it provides access to samples that are otherwise inac- cessible to instruments that can characterize geologic formations and detect trace levels of organic materials,” said Kris Zacny, director of the Exploration Technology Group for Honeybee Robotics. Developed with the support of the Planetary Society and the American Museum of Natural History, the Planetary Deep Drill is designed to gather samples for surface analysis. During the USG field trials, the drill will be equipped with humidity and temperature sensors, as well as a microscope capable of imaging particles as small as 0.5 microns in both white and ultraviolet light. Future versions of the drill may include instruments selected for the Mars2020 mission to test their performance in Mars- analog conditions. Compared to the capabilities of the Planetary Deep Drill, the tools which have already been deployed to the Moon and Mars offer relatively shallow access. The Planetary Deep Drill System is a wireline drill, with its depth limited by the length of a tether suspending it rather than the length of an individual drill bit. It contains all of the motors, electronics, and sensors required for operation and uses highly efficient rotary percussive drilling technology, which helps conserve valuable energy. In fact, it operates on as little as 250 watts of power - less than many consumer-grade battery-powered drills. The configuration of the drill makes it possible to deploy from either a rover or lander before beginning autonomous operations. “This prototype drill is exciting and highly innovative, not only because of the depths it can reach, but because it will carry a scientific payload that will deliver large amounts of data to the surface. A micro- scope with two LEDs will provide images with resolution high enough to image bacteria, and large enough to see fossils and/or geologic features easily visible to the naked eye. In addition, humidity and temperature sensors will be onboard the drill. These instruments are meant to demonstrate that rugged data-gathering instrumentation can be placed on board a drill that can penetrate deep enough to reach water, and perhaps l ife, on Mars,” said Michael Shara, science principal investigator of the Planetary Deep Drill, curator of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, and adjunct professor of astronomy at Columbia University. 58 FEBRUARY 2016 WorldWide Drilling Resource ®