
Proceedings Paper
Auto-Gopher: a wireline rotary-hammer ultrasonic drillFormat | Member Price | Non-Member Price |
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Paper Abstract
Developing technologies that would enable NASA to sample rock, soil, and ice by coring, drilling or abrading at a
significant depth is of great importance for a large number of in-situ exploration missions as well as for earth
applications. Proven techniques to sample Mars subsurface will be critical for future NASA astrobiology missions that
will search for records of past and present life on the planet, as well as the search of water and other resources. A deep
corer, called Auto-Gopher, is currently being developed as a joint effort of the JPL's NDEAA laboratory and Honeybee
Robotics Corp. The Auto-Gopher is a wire-line rotary- hammer drill that combines rock breaking by hammering using
an ultrasonic actuator and cuttings removal by rotating a fluted bit. The hammering mechanism is based on the
Ultrasonic/Sonic Drill/Corer (USDC) that has been developed as an adaptable tool for many of drilling and coring
applications. The USDC uses an intermediate free-flying mass to transform the high frequency vibrations of the horn tip
into a sonic hammering of a drill bit. The USDC concept was used in a previous task to develop an Ultrasonic/Sonic Ice
Gopher. The lessons learned from testing the ice gopher were implemented into the design of the Auto-Gopher by
inducing a rotary motion onto the fluted coring bit. A wire-line version of such a system would allow penetration of
significant depth without a large increase in mass. A laboratory version of the corer was developed in the NDEAA lab to
determine the design and drive parameters of the integrated system. The design configuration lab version of the design
and fabrication and preliminary testing results are presented in this paper.
Paper Details
Date Published: 15 April 2011
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7981, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2011, 79813U (15 April 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.880827
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7981:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2011
Masayoshi Tomizuka, Editor(s)
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7981, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2011, 79813U (15 April 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.880827
Show Author Affiliations
Mircea Badescu, Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)
Stewart Sherrit, Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)
Xiaoqi Bao, Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)
Stewart Sherrit, Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)
Xiaoqi Bao, Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7981:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2011
Masayoshi Tomizuka, Editor(s)
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