mars_drilling_000622 WASHINGTON -- The news of
liquid water on Mars may herald a new age of exploration on the Red Planet, but the tools needed to tap this fountain of liquid gold are far from finished.One of the biggest challenges scientists face is the question of what lies beneath the surface of Mars. Because they are just learning about the
planets makeup, its not clear what technology would work best for extracting water. 
"We would like to land a robot on Mars to drill. But we have a lot of homework to do in robotics to do this."
This past year, scientists from private industry and the government have formed a group called the Mars Drilling Project to answer these questions.
"We are doing a systems study of drilling about 200 meters (656 feet)," said Jim Blacic of the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. "And we are in the early phases of understanding the problem."
This coiled-tube drilling unit, developed for earthbound drilling, could prove useful on Mars.
Los Alamos researchers, along with
scientists at NASA and the Department of Energy, and engineers from oil-and-gas companies may be years away from a sure thing to send to Mars, but they all agree that a revolutionary technology is needed."We would like to land a robot on Mars to drill," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the NASAs Office of Space Science at a press conference Thursday, June 22. "But we have a lot of homework to do in robotics to do this."
One of the first steps is to craft a robotic drill that is lightweight for its eight-month journey to Mars. And once it arrives on the planet, a system must be set up to evaluate the area to be penetrated by the drill.
"We are worried about pressured zones at certain depths," Blacic said. Because there is likely a variety of rock, including basalt and interlay sediments as well as ground ice, there needs to be a way to cool the drill bit, he said.
One prototype being mulled over is a "case-while-drilling" robotic spacecraft that bores through the planets surface while dropping a liner around the drill to protect it from the heat caused by such forces as friction. The liner would also support the hole while it is being drilled and carry the bits of rock produced by the drilling to the surface.
"On Mars, you dont have a machine shop around the corner if the bit breaks," said Jack Kolle, president of Tempress Technologies in Kent, Washington. His company, which has worked on the Mars Drilling Project, develops drilling tools for the oil-and-gas industry.
SpaceDev, a Poway, California-based commercial space exploration and development company, has been working with Canadian mining company NorCat to come up with a prototype of a low-gravity drilling device that anchors itself to an asteroids surface. The company hopes to eventually use the drill for its planned Mars sample return mission in 2005.
We are working with NorCat on a project to convert a big hydraulic drill to a small electric one," said SpaceDev CEO Jim Benson. The drill is a diamond-tip core drill that can bore through the most solid masses of rock, he said.
Despite a tough, damage-resistant diamond-bit drill, there are other issues that surface when samples from Mars' interior are being extracted. Sample returns from the interior of Mars must be free of contamination for scientists to look for indigenous microbial life from the planet.
"Generally drilling can be an unreliable and dirty," said Peter Smeallie, executive director of The Institute for Advanced Drilling in Fairfax, Virginia.
The Mars Drilling Project is also considering a rock melter designed at Los Alamos, to make sure core samples are pure for determining whether life forms exist and to also protect scientists handling the samples from potentially life-threatening bacteria. "We are developing technology for sterile sampling because its almost impossible to decontaminate things once there is live bacteria on it," Kolle said.
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