The future exploration of Mars will require access to the subsurface, along with acquisition of samples for scientific analysis and ground-truthing of water ice and mineral reserves for in situ resource utilization. The Icebreaker drill is an integral part of the Icebreaker mission concept to search for life in ice-rich regions on Mars. Since the mission targets Mars Special Regions as defined by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), the drill has to meet the appropriate cleanliness standards as requested by NASA's Planetary Protection Office. In addition, the Icebreaker mission carries life-detection instruments; and in turn, the drill and sample delivery system have to meet stringent contamination requirements to prevent false positives. This paper reports on the development and testing of the Icebreaker drill, a 1 m class rotary-percussive drill and triple redundant sample delivery system. The drill acquires subsurface samples in short, approximately 10 cm bites, which makes the sampling system robust and prevents thawing and phase changes in the target materials. Autonomous drilling, sample acquisition, and sample transfer have been successfully demonstrated in Mars analog environments in the Arctic and the Antarctic Dry Valleys, as well as in a Mars environmental chamber. In all environments, the drill has been shown to perform at the "1-1-100-100" level; that is, it drilled to 1 m depth in approximately 1 hour with less than 100 N weight on bit and approximately 100 W of power. The drilled substrate varied and included pure ice, ice-rich regolith with and without rocks and with and without 2% perchlorate, and whole rocks. The drill is currently at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 5. The next-generation Icebreaker drill weighs 10 kg, which is representative of the flightlike model at TRL 5/6.

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) facilitates planetary exploration by drawing needed resources, such as water, from the local environment. This work presents a 3-step in-situ water recovery approach: 1) mining the soil using deep fluted auger, 2) extracting the water from soil within the flutes, and 3) discarding the soil before transporting the water to a main storage facility. Drilling in icy soil and ice has already been demonstrated in vacuum chambers by the authors. This paper focuses on the second critical step: water extraction from the icy soil or ice within the deep flutes. This paper reports on tests demonstrating efficient collection of water from ice-bearing soil under Mars conditions. The water recovery Mobile In Situ Water Extractor (MISWE) breadboard collected as much as 92% of the water initially present in the soil, and required as little as 0.9 Whr/g of energy (80% efficient compared to theoretical). The extraction process took approximately 40 min.

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[1] We performed laboratory laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and laser Raman spectroscopy measurements on samples from a layered outcrop from the Atacama Desert, Chile. This outcrop is a terrestrial morphological and possibly mineralogical analogue for similar formations that will likely be investigated by the Curiosity rover at Gale Crater. Our results demonstrate that fast LIBS analysis can generate semiquantitative chemical profiles in subminute times using automated data processing tools. Therefore, the LIBS instrument can be an invaluable tactical tool on the Curiosity rover for remote, rapid geochemical survey of layered outcrops, thus serving daily operational needs. The derived chemical profiles, supported by the range of minerals identified by Raman spectroscopy, is consistent with the products of a continental evaporitic lake. In the framework of future surface exploration on Mars, a combined Raman/LIBS investigation may provide a rapid mineralogical/chemical evaluation of targets that can be useful for selecting samples to be eventually collected for sample return purposes or for selecting sample sites to be drilled in the search for astrobiology-relevant species. Citation: Sobron,

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Rover-mounted geotechnical systems are of paramount importance to lunar trafficability assessment, construction, and excavation/mining toward establishing permanent human presence on the Moon. These tools can also be used to determine density, when the regolith is used as radiation shield, for example. Two popular insitu devices for establishing geotechnical properties of soil are the Static Cone Penetrometer (SCP) and Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP). However, both systems have shortcomings that may prevent them from being robotically-deployed in a low gravity environment. In this paper we describe an alternative system, called the Percussive Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (PDCP) that can be used to roboticallymeasure geotechnical soil properties in a low gravity environment. It is shown that PDCP data correlates well with the data obtained from both SCP and DCP testing, and by extension with California Bearing Ratio (CBR) and soil bearing strength.