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NASA has barely scratched the surface of Mars – literally. While ancient rovers have dug in the rusty soils of the red planet, NASA is testing a drill that can reach the feet and operate autonomously with minimal human supervision.
By probing as far below the hard Martian surface, you will discover a world we have never seen up close: a world in which scientists think there is a chance for life.
This month, NASA is putting this drill to the test in the driest and most Mars-like place that exists on Earth – the Atacama Desert in Chile. This drill, developed in partnership with Honeybee Robotics, is attached to a rover carrying a suite of instruments. These tools can analyze soil samples collected by the mobile and discover potential biosignatures of microbial life. This project, the Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies, or ARADS, is an important demonstration of NASA's willingness to bring these technologies to Mars for other missions beyond March 2020.
"ARADS aims to prepare NASA to look for life on Mars," said Brian Glass, senior investigator of the ARADS program at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. "Developing the scientific instruments and robotics we need is an important part of that, so it's important to understand how we're doing the mission, and the best way to do that is to do it here on Earth. "
Prepare for Mars in the driest place on the planet
As NASA's Artemis program prepares to send humans back to the moon by 2024, the agency has longer-term views on Mars. Decades of robotic missions on Mars have shown that billions of years ago, Mars probably had oceans of water and a denser atmosphere, conditions that could have supported life.
Today, the surface of Mars is incredibly dry – with a thousand times less water than the drier parts of Atacama. Glass and his team of engineers and scientists have traveled to Atacama over the last four years to develop their ability to detect the remains of ancient life, or a life somehow lost in hiding .
This latest rover deployment in Atacama will test its ability to bring this complex science to the vast distance between Earth and Mars. A team of scientists is staying at NASA Ames to operate a "mission control" room where they will analyze the results from a distance, then tell the rover where to dig in the desert. To achieve this, NASA not only needs a drill capable of deep digging, but also to dig intelligently.
Hands free drilling
Just as a hand drill may be prone to getting stuck as it sinks, a drill could operate on another planet. In addition, cold temperatures could freeze the drill on site. A stalled exercise could easily spell the end of the mission when the closest humans are millions of miles away. For exercises on Mars, autonomy is not a feature but a requirement.
To be able to operate without human intervention in real time, each drill motor constantly collects feedback. What is the pressure exerted by the drill, the movements of each motor – all this is recorded and interpreted by the drill, which allows him to correct the trajectory on the fly. If it encounters a harder material, the drill can apply more force. If the exercise remains stuck, he knows exactly where he is and how to dislodge. The result is a drill capable of digging into almost any material, producing a soil sample, no matter what challenges it may face.
The next March 2020 rover will use a different drill with similar autonomous capabilities, but will not need to be as versatile to reach its target depth of a few inches. When you dig 20 times deeper than the ARADS exercise, it is essential to work independently.
"The peculiarity of this exercise is that it can take you from dirt to data, all by yourself," said Thomas Stucky, head of sample processing software for ARADS. "All the scientists have to do is direct the rover to the place where he needs to dig, to tell the drill how deep, and the exercise will determine the rest."
In search of life under the surface
The data collected by the exercise showing how to operate in specific soil conditions can also indicate where to look for life. At such depths, do soils become harder or softer, drier or wetter? Depending on the ease with which the seeder can move in the ground, we can know it.
"If there is life on the basement of Mars, it's probably in the form of microbes that struggle to live with minute amounts of water in the soil or layers of salt, "said Arwen Davé, Systems Engineer at ARADS. "Depending on what the drill can tell us on the ground, we can detect where these layers are, perhaps even where life is."
This same stand-alone exercise could also lead to the Moon as part of NASA's goal of locating water and other resources on our nearest neighbor to foster a human presence. sustainable and long-term in distant spaces.
With a hands-free exercise in its toolbox, NASA aims to discover the worlds hidden beneath the surface of other planets. There we can find the secrets to live beyond the Earth – for us or for any other form of life we hope to find.
Additional resources:
Learn more about the ARADS project here.
See a photo gallery of the ARADS 2018 deployment here.
Please follow Astrobiology on Twitter.
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