Northern light drill for Mars: Performance evaluation

Navarathinam, Nimal; Lee, Regina; Borschiov, Konstantin; Quine, Brendan M.

doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2010.10.018

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…This type of research (exemplified in the references to this paper) is gaining in importance. Some of the works from the past and the current ones concerning drilling in space are described in publications [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] and in a book [66].…”

Section: Space Drilling Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feasibility Study of Low Mass and Low Energy Consumption Drilling Devices for Future Space (Mining Surveying) Missions

et al. 2021

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The global climate crisis forces the search for new ecological sources of energy and mining methods. Space mining can solve those problems, but, first, wide geological surveying space missions using drilling methods are necessary. Additionally, drilling methods will be important in geological, life searching, geoengineering, and many other studies of extraterrestrial objects. Space is becoming a new area of possible drilling applications. Designing future space drilling missions requires adapting drilling technologies, not only to the conditions of the space environment, but also to the economic and technological realities of the space industry. The possibility of constructing low mass coring devices with energy consumption below 100 W was investigated in this paper. Minimization of energy consumption and mass of a coring is essential for the device to be used in space missions, when lander instruments supplied by low power electric battery are expected to work reliably and the launch cost (depending of mass) at an economically acceptable level. Some similar devices investigated for the future space missions are known from papers listed in the references. To answer whether or not it is possible to build such devices, the authors performed initial drillability tests. The obtained results are presented in this paper.

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Section: Space Drilling Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feasibility Study of Low Mass and Low Energy Consumption Drilling Devices for Future Space (Mining Surveying) Missions

et al. 2021

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“…Several parts of the drilling process were tested and demonstrated with successful performance, just like sample acquisition and transport (Zacny et al 2013b) in the Antarctic Dry Valleys and in the Atacama desert (Zacny et al 2015), at Haughton crater in arctic Canada (Glass et al 2006), at Rio Tinto in Spain (Prieto-Ballesteros et al 2008), and at the Gypsum Quarry at Borrego Springs, California (Zacny et al 2013c). Under the planned Canadian Norhtern Light Mission several Mars relevant aspects will be tested of a drilling on Mars (Navarathinam et al 2011).…”

Section: Background Information: Drilling On Earth and Marsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization and first results of the planetary borehole-wall imager — methods to develop for in-situ exploration

et al. 2019

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Prototypes of borehole-wall imager instruments were developed and tested at a desert riverbed in Morocco and at a lake’s salty flat in the Atacama desert, to support the drilling activity of ExoMars rover. The onsite recorded borehole images contain information on the context that are lost during the sample acquisition. Benefits of the borehole-wall imaging is the easier maximal energy estimation of a fluvial flow, the detailed information on sedimentation and layering, especially the former existence of liquid water and its temporal changes, including paleo-flow direction estimation from grain imbrication direction. Benefits of laboratory analysis of the acquired samples are the better identification of mineral types, determination of the level of maturity of granular sediment, and identification of the smallest, wet weathered grains. Based on the lessons learned during the comparison of field and laboratory results, we demonstrate that recording the borehole-wall with optical instrument during/after drilling on Mars supports the paleo-environment reconstruction with such data that would otherwise be lost during the sample acquisition. Because of the lack of plate tectonism and the low geothermal gradient on Mars, even Ga old sediments provide observable features that are especially important for targeting Mars sample return and later crewed Mars missions.

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“…In this paper, simple, low-cost, and wide-field-of-view sun sensor methodologies are presented. The sensors described here are under development for the YUSEND (York University Space Engineering Nanosatellite Demonstration) mission at York University [13,14], which focuses on CubeSat technology development such as for the 1 U CubeSat shown in Figure 1, as well as a microrover under development for the Northern Light Mars Lander Mission, shown in Figure 2 [15,16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Low-Cost Photodiode Sun Sensor for CubeSat and Planetary Microrover

Post

Lee

2013

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

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This paper presents the development of low-cost methodologies to determine the attitude of a small, CubeSat-class satellite and a microrover relative to the sun's direction. The use of commercial hardware and simple embedded designs has become an effective path for university programs to put experimental payloads in space for minimal cost, and the development of sensors for attitude and heading determination is often a critical part. The development of two compact and efficient but simple coarse sun sensor methodologies is presented in this research. A direct measurement of the solar angle uses a photodiode array sensor and slit mask. Another estimation of the solar angle uses current measurements from orthogonal arrays of solar cells. The two methodologies are tested and compared on ground hardware. Testing results show that coarse sun sensing is efficient even with minimal processing and complexity of design for satellite attitude determination systems and rover navigation systems.

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Northern light drill for Mars: Performance evaluation

Cited by 8 publications

References 4 publications

Feasibility Study of Low Mass and Low Energy Consumption Drilling Devices for Future Space (Mining Surveying) Missions

Feasibility Study of Low Mass and Low Energy Consumption Drilling Devices for Future Space (Mining Surveying) Missions

Characterization and first results of the planetary borehole-wall imager — methods to develop for in-situ exploration

A Low-Cost Photodiode Sun Sensor for CubeSat and Planetary Microrover

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