Drilling Automation Tests At A Lunar/Mars Analog Site

Future in-situ lunar/martian resource utilization and characterization, as well as the scientific search for life on Mars, will require access to the subsurface and hence drilling. Drilling on Earth is hard - an art form more than an engineering discipline. The limited mass, energy and manpower in p...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Glass, B., Cannon, H., Paulsen, G., Lee, P., Hanagud, S.
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:unknown
Published: 2006
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20060026170
Description
Summary:Future in-situ lunar/martian resource utilization and characterization, as well as the scientific search for life on Mars, will require access to the subsurface and hence drilling. Drilling on Earth is hard - an art form more than an engineering discipline. The limited mass, energy and manpower in planetary drilling situations makes application of terrestrial drilling techniques problematic. The Drilling Automation for Mars Exploration (DAME) project is developing drilling automation and robotics for projected use in missions to the Moon and Mars in the 2011-15 period. This has been tested recently, drilling in permafrost at a lunar/martian analog site (Haughton Crater, Devon Island, Canada).