14 DAY TRIAL // A group of investigators has just concluded a new series of tests in the Antarctica, whose objective was to analyze the functionality of the new IceBreaker rotary-percussive drill. The instrument is destined for Mars, where it needs to be able to dig at least 1 meter below the permafrost.
In order to simulate the harsh environment on the barren Red Planet, scientists decided to carry out the tests at University Valley, in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. There were numerous reasons this location was selected over any other Mars-analogs.
For starters, temperatures at this location reach minus 25 degrees Celsius, which makes them similar to the ones on our neighboring planet. Secondly, soils at this location have a composition similar to the one discovered by the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008.
At the valley's mouth, researchers found a desiccated layer overlaying ice-cemented ground, while at its head they uncovered massive layers of pure ice. This gave them a variety of conditions to test the new drill in, Space reports.
As the investigation unfolded, experts had to use IceBreaker to collect samples at 10-centimeter intervals, for one meter of digs into the ice-cemented grounds. Another meter had to be dug in ice.
Conducting such a test would be a piece of cake under normal conditions, but this time the drill had to do all this automatically, without any interference from its human controllers.
“The drill has only three commands: Seek (it finds the ground), Drill (it performs drilling action), Pull Out (pulls out of the hole and deposits sample into a cup),” says Kris Zacny of Astrobiology Magazine, who traveled to Antarctica and documented the effort.
“Although these seem like simple commands, behind each one of them hides an algorithm that analyzes drilling telemetry and makes decisions on how to proceed further,” he adds.
According to the account, it took the IceBreaker about an hour to dig a meter underground, and to collect and store the samples it collected at 10-centimeter intervals.
Throughout the entire process, it only used as much energy as a lightbulb – some 100 Watts – and used a drill but that pushed against the ground at less then100 Newtons (around 20 lbs).
“With this demonstration, we have shown that drilling on Mars (and also on the Moon, in regions that contain water-ice, for example) is possible. The power, energy and preload are all within the payload capability of a small lander,” Zacny says.
During tests conducted in the ice field – as in not in areas with rough soils – the drill bit reached depths of up to 2.5 meters (100 inches) without any problems, demonstrating that required capabilities can be easily exceeded for an ice-only environment.