2nd International Mars Sample Return 2018 (LPI Contrib. No. 2071) 6067.pdf

Antarctic Testing of the European Ultrasonic Planetary Core Drill (UPCD)

Ryan Timoney1, Kevin Worrall1, Xuan Li1, David Firstbrook1, Patrick Harkness1

1 Space Systems Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK, G12 8QQ

Introduction: the European and worldwide planetary science commu- The Ultrasonic Planetary Core Drill (UPCD) pro- nities. ject, funded by a ~ €2.5M European Union Seventh Lessons Learned from the Field: Framework grant, has seen a consortium of European The field site was chosen with guidance from the partners develop a sample acquisition and caching sys- British Antarctic Survey (BAS) who operate within the tem for future exploration of terrestrial and icy planetary British Antarctic Territories in which Coal Nunatak lies. bodies. The ultrasonic/sonic drilling technique which The location is deemed to be analogous to the conditions forms the basis of the technology was pioneered by which might be expected in other polar locations which NASA JPL [1] at the turn of the 21st century. The Uni- are more commonly used as Mars analog sites (Antarc- versity of Glasgow, principal investigators of the UPCD tic Dry Valleys and the Haughton Impact Crater, Devon Island), though had never been utilised by instrumenta- project, have worked towards optimizing the technique tion teams seeking to test their hardware. This provided [2] and integrating the technology into an architecture the UPCD team with an exciting opportunity to work in which allows multi-drill bit coring and caching through a relatively unexplored environment coupled with the a novel application of the bayonet connection method peace of mind afforded by relying on the operational [3, 4]. and logistical expertise of BAS, a longstanding leader The UPCD project culminated in a field trial at Coal in polar exploration. Over the course of a ten-day expe- Nunatak, Antarctic Peninsula, in the Antarctic summer dition, the UPCD team was met with a number of chal- 2016 (Figure 1). The presence of geology found only in lenges which it attempted to overcome in order to push the polar regions of Earth and Mars such as a perma- the drill harder, exposing areas where the system was frost, frost polygons and sloped lineae qualified the site most robust and where the technology was lacking. as a suitable location for testing the hardware. The terrain proved to be extremely challenging, providing the team with a breadth of lessons learned re- garding, predominantly, the need for higher than antici- pated drilling torques, amongst other findings which would only have been unearthed in a field test cam- paign. While the need for greater motor performance was identified, the system proved itself as having a no- table robustness in the assembly of complete drill strings, and the subsequent disassembly and caching of these sample-containing core drill bits. This area of re- search is particularly novel, thus the results are highly encouraging and may confer an exciting and novel abil- ity to future mission planners.

Figure 1: Coal Nunatak Field Site We at the University of Glasgow are eager to present our findings to the international Mars Sample Return The field test campaign allowed the team to push the community at this upcoming conference.. complete UPCD architecture (Drill System, Sample Caching Carousel and Z-Axis Vertical Actuator, Figure References: 2) to the limits of its capability. The relatively unknown [1] Y. Bar-Cohen et al, (2000), SPIE Smart Struc- subsurface ensured that the team would be drilling tures, 3992, 101. [2] P. Harkness et al, (2011), IEEE Ul- blind, analogous to the conditions which are experi- trasonics Control, Vol 58, 11. [3] R. Timoney et al. enced by instrument teams on existing and future plan- (2015). AIAA Space. [4] R. Timoney et al. (2016) etary missions. Testing the system in a Mars analog en- vironment paves the way to achieving an advanced ASCE Earth and Space

Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5-6, further en-

hancing the complement of instrumentation available to