Honeybee Robotics has been working on a Planetary Deep drill. It has been tested to a depth of about 100 feet (30 meters). The plan has to been to have the lightweight system reach kilometers of depth. This would be able to reach the liquid Lake on Mars.
The Planetary Deep Drill is a wire-line drill designed to reach miles below extraterrestrial surfaces. The lightweight drill meets the payload and excavation requirements required to reach far below the icy surface formations of Mars, Enceladus or Europa.
The drill is four meters tall (13 feet) and has a a diameter of 6.4 centimeters (2.5 inches). The Planetary Deep Drill also features motors, electronics and sensors to operate its tungsten carbide tip pounds into ice and rock at over 250 revolutions per minute.
It can operate on 100 watts of power.
A four-meter-long drill that can be raised and lowered using a long Kevlar tether. As the tether coils around a winch, the drill will go deeper below the surface.
Antarctic drilling 3700 meters to Lake Vostok
There has been drilling on Earth in Antarctica to an underground liquid lake (Lake Vostok) that was under 3700 meters of ice. There has been the new discovery of what could be an underground Lake of liquid water 1500 meters deep on Mars.
The Mars InSight Mission that is currently being sent will only dig about 5 meters down in Mars.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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