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MARS Rock Drill Spectrometer

Many of the better clues to the history of Mars may be hidden below the surface. Factors such as long exposure to the sun without the protection of a significant atmosphere, high winds and dust storms, large diurnal temperature excursions, and eons of space weathering combine to render a greatly modified surface. Drilling can provide access to the layers in the caps, to permafrost where significant hydrous activity may be occurring and (for some models of the regolith) access to pristine crustal material.

ICX Photonics is designing, fabricating and functionally testing a solid-state spectrometer to integrate within a custom drill segment for the existing Mars Deep Drilling Platform. The goal is to make a spectrometer that is extremely rugged and requires few (mass, power) resources. It is ideal for use on the landed missions to Mars, as well as comets, asteroids or even Europa. The spectrometer will fit into a 1.3” drill bit that will be used to drill up to 30 m into the surface of these bodies. The spectrometer is designed to rapidly analyze the range of composition and aggregation of the soil as the drill penetrates to its ultimate depth.

This work is a collaboration with HoneyBee Robotics (New York, NY) and NASA/JPL
and is sponsored by NASA/JPL.