How low can you go?

Biting down hard on Mars may not be too far off in the future.

A commercial drilling firm has teamed up with NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explore the feasibility of a Mars drill. Preliminary work looks very promising, said Humboldt Mandell, Jr., in JSC's Exploration Office.

A proprietary drill design -- capable of digging down to over 650-feet (200-meters) below Mars' surface -- has been scoped out by Baker Hughes of Houston, Texas. A leader in oilfield drilling services, the firm works on high-technology ways to go deep to find oil and gas reservoirs, supplying separation technologies to the worldwide process industries.

Baker Hughes has offered to deliver a space-rated drill in 24 months after go-ahead, at a fixed price of $12 million. "That's pretty cheap," Mandell said. Several iterations of the drill design have been made. Now being fabricated and near ready to test is a 110-pound (50-kilogram) version of the drill capable of reaching some 65-feet (20-meters) depth on Mars. The device would use extremely low power to do its work, he said.

"Depth does matter. The deeper, the more customers," JSC's Mandell said. "If you're operating at the surface, you are interesting a small number of geologists. The deeper you go, then you involve the organic chemists and life scientists. Below that, now you start getting into the possibility of liquid water. That's when you start picking up the support of the human exploration type of people that, conceivably someday, could put money into this," he told SPACE.com.

Techniques and technologies to measure while drilling are under review by NASA and Baker Hughes. So too are ways to produce intact, protected core samples that can be studied by automated means, Mandell said. Work underway today may lead to future drills on Mars that burrow down as deep as two-and-a-half miles (4-kilometers), he said.

Sucking up 200 watts of energy per day, the drill would make slow, but steady headway - about a little over three feet (one meter) per day for 200 Mars days, Mandell said. "If we had a nuclear power supply, then we could really go," he added.

Taking the Moon at face value is Alex Ignatiev, of the Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center at the University of Houston. He reported progress in using lunar-like materials to produce thin film silicon solar cells. Small quantities of carefully concocted, NASA-supplied, lunar "simulant" are used in his experiments.

In melting and evaporating the fake Moon material, an excellent substrate and anti-reflective and protective coating for thin film silicon solar cells has been created. Lab investigations are underway to fabricate silicon solar cells on melted lunar regolith, Ignatiev said.

Ignatiev said that he envisions a solar cell grid on the Moon, powering up bases and science hardware.

Initially, a desk-sized crawler takes in the lunar regolith, laying out a pavement of solar cells as it moves about. Batches of the Moon-made solar cells would provide electricity, on the order of 200 kilowatts capacity per year. Over time, gigawatts of power can be made available.

"Then you can start beaming the power around the Moon to where you need it," Ignatiev said.

Ultra-small technology offers big promise, said Robert Wegeng, chief engineer at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. He gave an update on the building of Micro Chemical and Thermal Systems, or MicroCATS for short.

Microminiaturization has led to a novel breed of MicroCATS, Wegeng said. This work makes it possible to greatly reduce the weight, size, and expense of space systems, such as heating, cooling, and power generation hardware.

These tiny devices, best thought of as a chemical plant on a chip, can handle chemical reactions and chemical separations. Possible space applications include making rocket fuel or yielding oxygen for human consumption.

Wegeng said that the Moon's surface, plopped down on Mars, or planted upon near-Earth asteroids and comets - the palm of your hand-sized MicroCATS look promising in their ability to suck in resources and yield outputs of water, oxygen, and fuel.

The real message of the Space Resources Utilization Roundtable, the third gathering held to date, is "almost a destiny thing," said Taylor of the University of Hawaii.

"Great nations do great things, If we back away from space, what are the great things we're going to do?" he asked. "Even without the grand plans, as long as we have a goal of wanting to have permanent habitats on the Moon and Mars, then we can prepare for that objective with modest cost and great return," he said.

A few uncertainties, technologically and scientifically, need to be addressed over the next few years, said Duke of the Colorado School of Mines. For one, finding out how much water ice might be at the lunar poles is important. Public and private partnerships to spearhead technology development is another, he said.

"The roundtable is bringing together interested space professionals, experienced resources personnel from industry, and entrepreneurs," Duke said. "Our goal is to utilize the resources of space, including the Moon, Mars and asteroids, advancing the prospects for their commercial development."

"That's the strategy to get us to the decade of 2010, and beyond," Duke said.