Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p51d1229g&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P51D-1229
Mathematics
Logic
6225 Mars, 6250 Moon (1221), 6297 Instruments And Techniques
Scientific paper
Introduction: Robotic drilling has great potential to become a vital, enabling technology in the context of future human and robotic exploration of the Solar System. Specific needs for human exploration relate to the ability for remote missions to scout potential locations for habitability and/or resource recovery. We will describe relevant challenges to robotic drilling and development pertaining to operations within hostile planetary environments. From the perspective of a system concept for mission architectures and exploration approaches, the ability to drill into extra-terrestrial planetary bodies and recover samples for analysis and/or utilization can provide vital references, resources, and opportunities for mission enrichment. The technology for supporting and planning such missions presents a feed-forward advantage for a human presence in such environments. Future space missions for drilling in the shallow and mid-to-deep subsurface face issues unfamiliar to terrestrial analogues, including limited power, very low or very high pressures, and widely varying thermal environments. We will discuss the means and approaches for establishing drilling operations, managing drilling sites, and mitigating environmental effects. Early robotic phases will leverage system-of-systems collaborations among humans and machines on and above the surface of planetary bodies. Such "precursor missions" will be charged with the task of mapping subsurface geology, understanding soil/rock particle distributions, obtaining geologic history, and determining local resource profiles. An example of the need for this kind of information is given to good effect by one of the lessons learned by NASA's Apollo program: the effects of lunar dust on humans, drilling mechanisms, and mission expectations were far greater than initially expected, and are still being critically considered. Future missions to Solar System bodies, including the Moon and Mars, will need to have advance information about local geologic effects, especially below the visible surface. In these hostile environments, valuable resources (e.g., water and other volatiles) will probably be hidden in substrata. Prospecting, mapping, excavating, and recovering these resources will remain a central need for NASA's exploration efforts for the foreseeable future. Swales Aerospace has a proven history in the development of low-power robotic drilling technology and research. We will show some results of a successful field campaign, during which our research prototype drill reached a depth of 10 meters with an average power consumption of only 100 Watts. We will summarize our results from a recent 2006 Idaho 2m-Basalt field test that proven basalt can be cored using 90W and past paper studies on drilling in the Martian environment and our perspective on the development of mission profiles for planetary drilling. We will suggest architectures for future drilling missions, potential configurations for deployed planetary drills, and provide comments on relevant engineering challenges such as sample acquisition, mission time, power, and mass.
Abbey William
Beegle Luther W.
Craig Joseph
Guerrero J. L.
Meyers M.
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