Tests of the prototype of the Martian drilling rig. Free Technical Library News

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Tests of the prototype Martian drilling rig

10.01.2019

Researchers and engineers from the University of Glasgow (Scotland) delivered a modified version of the prototype Martian drilling rig to Antarctica. The experiment in Antarctica is aimed at obtaining soil samples from a depth of 1,6 km, which will allow us to better study the climatic changes that have occurred on Earth over several million years.

According to the report, the work is carried out jointly with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) team, which is based at the Skytrain Ice Rise station, and on January 10, using its drilling rig, drilled a hole to a depth of 651 meters. Next, they are going to put into action the high-tech Scots P-RAID installation, designed to work in conditions of reduced gravity of Mars, complicating the task of creating enough force to break through hard surface soil. Especially to solve this problem, engineers from Glasgow created a machine that works on a slightly different principle.

Instead of just rotating the drill, the rig pierces and drills the soil at the same time, while its actions are controlled by an artificial intelligence control system. According to the developers, this allowed the designers to reduce the weight of the installation, while increasing the torque, and also to make the system autonomous, which will be useful when working on Mars.

However, the compact size and the ability to work autonomously interested the BAS team, which had previously been looking for ways to drill into the Antarctic rock at the bottom of an ice hole. While scientists have their own portable rig to work with relatively soft ice, however, the need to go lower, drilling through harder layers of rock created real logistical difficulties for a team working in a very remote area from civilization.

At the same time, the developers of the drilling apparatus said that in order to work in Martian conditions, the drill will also use ultrasound, which is not required in terrestrial drilling conditions. On Earth, the percussion mechanism of the installation will move along a circular inclined plane and break through the ground with each rotation of the drill.

While the BAS team works on the chemical analysis of ice samples taken from various depths during the first drilling, the Glasgow team will continue to dig deeper into the Antarctic ice. The researchers plan to measure the ratio of beryllium-10 radioactive isotopes at various depths to determine when and how the structure of ice and soil in the area changed under the influence of a reaction between cosmic radiation particles, nitrogen and oxygen atoms.

By finding out the ratio of isotopes in the rock, scientists will be able to understand when the soil was last not covered with ice and was directly exposed to the atmosphere.

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