Mars Drill
DB: This is Earth and Sky. Some scientists looking for life on Mars say that future robotic missions should carry a drill.
Carol Stoker: Most of the reasonable niches that we think about for life on other planets really are not at the surface, they’re underground.
JB: That’s Carol Stoker, a specialist in field robotics at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. She says a coring drill for Mars must fit into a spacecraft only a few meters across – weigh only a hundred kilograms – and be able to bore holes into rock tens to hundreds of meters deep.
Carol Stoker: And in addition to just the drilling itself, one needs to get the samples out of the drill, extract the samples out of the drilling system and put them into instruments which can … search for interesting compounds and, in fact search for life.
DB: Stoker’s team is now testing an experimental robotic drilling rig for Mars. The project will culminate in the spring of 2005 with a month–long simulation of an actual Mars drilling mission at the source of a river in southwestern Spain. Scientists suspect the site is home to an exotic underground ecosystem where microbes live without oxygen or energy from the sun.
JB: If the drill works there, Stoker says, it just might work on Mars. Our thanks to the National Science Foundation – where discoveries begin. I’m Joel Block with Deborah Byrd for Earth and Sky.
The following individual was interviewed for today’s show. Our thanks to:
Carol Stoker
NASA Ames Research Center
More Resources:
“”NASA SCIENTISTS TO DRILL FOR NEW, EXOTIC LIFE NEAR ACIDIC SPANISH RIVER, NASA Press Release, April 8, 2003 (NASA News)
“NASA seeks Spanish Martians (Geological Society, April 10, 2003)
