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The Exomars project will land a 2 metre vertical drill on the surface, sampling much deeper than anything done so far. It's just a question of priorities. Dril
by hahainternet 13y ago
The Exomars project will land a 2 metre vertical drill on the surface, sampling much deeper than anything done so far.
It's just a question of priorities. Drilling 4cm into a rock with a specific surface abrasion tool is a long way from plunging a 2 metre metal shaft into unknown terrain. Engineering this so it has no chance of jamming, breaking, overheating etc is not gonna be a trivial task. How do you lubricate a drill without contaminating the environment and with such a wide temperature variation?
- thaumasiotes 13y agoWhat exactly is the downside of contaminating the environment?
- Ma8ee 13y agoMakes it harder to what compunds are indigenous and what you just brought yourself. No use shouting Eureka over some organic compound in a hole you just spilled oil in.
- careersuicide 13y agoIn general great effort is made to ensure that probes don't contain any biological contaminates so if we do discover signs of life we're very certain it wasn't a microbe that hitched a ride. As far as contamination from drilling (due to lubricants or something else entirely) I imagine that the desire for general cleanliness is for much the same reason. If we're going to spend hundreds of millions of billions of dollars on a probe to another world we want to be really confident anything interesting we find is actually from that world and not Earth.