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A TDE funded activity, led by the University of Glasgow (UK), together with the British Antarctic Survey (UK) and Apogee Engineering, investigated and breadboarded a new deep drilling technology for future use on planetary surfaces. Aimed with reaching depths of 20 m, an order of magnitude deeper than conventional subsurface approaches, the drill must be able to penetrate through various types of regolith, rocks, permafrost, and ice.
Drilling is achieved by using a downhole module deployed by an unrolling-tube drill string architecture, as conventional drill string assembly is not feasible for drilling to such depths in space. The downhole module clamps to the borehole walls during each drill peck, while the spoil is passed up through the module with the help of an auger and brought to the surface using a shuttle-bucket. With each peck the system advances deeper, until the desired depth is achieved. While doing so, the borehole is stabilised by the unrolling-tube.
The demonstrated drill concept (as built in 2022, the launch silo is absent) seeks to determine if a viable drill system can be deployed to a considerable depth from a RolaTube structure on the surface.