Icebreaker-3 Drill Integration and Testing at Two Mars-Analog Sites

Glass, B.; Bergman, D.; Yaggi, B.; Dave, A.; Zacny, K.

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NASA NTRS · 20160006480

Icebreaker-3 Drill Integration and Testing at Two Mars-Analog Sites

Glass, B.·Bergman, D.·Yaggi, B.·Dave, A.·Zacny, K.

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Abstract

A decade of evolutionary development of integrated automated drilling and sample handling at analog sites and in test chambers has made it possible to go 1 meter through hard rocks and ice layers on Mars. The latest Icebreaker-3 drill has been field tested in 2014 at the Haughton Crater Marsanalog site in the Arctic and in 2015 with a Mars lander mockup in Rio Tinto, Spain, (with sample transfer arm and with a prototype life-detection instrument). Tests in Rio Tinto in 2015 successfully demonstrated that the drill sample (cuttings) was handed-off from the drill to the sample transfer arm and thence to the on-deck instrument inlet where it was taken in and analyzed ("dirt-to-data").

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Glass, B., Bergman, D., Yaggi, B., Dave, A., Zacny, K.. 2016-04-11. Icebreaker-3 Drill Integration and Testing at Two Mars-Analog Sites. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160006480

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