29-11-10 NASA’s IceBite team in Antarctica testing new drill

NASA’s IceBite team is in Antarctica this month testing a new drill built by Honeybee Robotics for use on a possible future mission to Mars.In this blog entry,Kris Zacny writes about the first field tests of the Icebreaker drill.On Thursday,Nov.18th,we had a very exciting day.Our Mars drill was to be operated by a class of 5th grade students from Valley View School in Pleasanton,California.We got up early in the morning to set up the drill and the communication system and to make sure everything was ready for 11 am California time (8 am our time).Though it may seem that California is 3 hours ahead of us,in fact it is 21 hours behind us! Because we are very close to the International Date Line (IDL), our day starts 21 hours before California’s day.Thus we were already on Thursday while California was still on Wednesday.At 11 am sharp,we called Robert Pallasou,the teacher in charge of the class.Chris McKay,project principal investigator and Arwen Davé,project engineer,both from NASA Ames,were already at the school introducing kids to our nearest planetary neighbor:Mars.Skype worked very well.We could see them and they could see us.It was very exciting.It was as if we were on another planet calling home.Well,Antarctica is almost like another planet! We also had another Internet line setup just for controlling our Mars drill,called the IceBreaker(since one day it will break into icy soils and ice on Mars and acquire samples for analysis).We used gotomypc.com online software (why reinvent the wheel,right?).The software allows a user to remotely view and operate one computer from another computer.Thus,the students in California could see our computer screen and move mouse around it and click on various drilling parameters.And they had lots of options! Before we knew it,the drill started to move. The kids were eager to drill – there was no time to waste! First,they used the Seek routine to find the ground.The drill slowly moved down until it stopped when it touched it.(We use this routine all the time when grinding rocks with the Honeybee Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the Mars Exploration Rovers,Spirit and Opportunity.It works every time.)Then came drilling. California operators clicked new buttons and the drill started to rotate and at the same time started to hammer into the ground.This combined rotary and hammering motion makes drilling very efficient,so the drill generates very little heat. This is important when drilling icy soils,because we don’t want to melt and vaporize the ice.The drill initially moved slowly and then sped up and reached 10 cm depth in no time.Then came the best part: sample acquisition (after all, that’s what the drill is for: to acquire a sample!). Another few buttons later, and the drill moved up and samples fell into a small jar. Mission accomplished! Well,not entirely.There were more kids that wanted to have a go at drilling in Antarctica.And thus the cycle repeated over and over.It was really fun to watch the drill doing its thing.If I knew things were going to go that easily,I would have gone to have breakfast (which I completely missed that day)! Margarita Marinova,a scientist from NASA Ames,collected all the samples and promised to bring them back to the school so our young drill operators could carefully analyze them.Who knows,maybe one of these young drillers will one day operate a drill on Mars!