Fifty years ago, Apollo 15 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, sending
Commander David R. Scott, Command Module Pilot Alfred M. Worden, and Lunar
Module Pilot James B. Irwin on the first of three Apollo “J” missions. These
missions gave astronauts the opportunity to explore the Moon for longer
periods using upgraded and more plentiful scientific instruments than ever
before. Apollo 15 was the first mission where astronauts used the Apollo Lunar
Surface Drill (ALSD) and the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV).
Scott and Irwin would land on the Moon and use the ALSD at the site where
they set up several scientific instruments during the nearly 67 hours they
were on the surface of the Moon. The tool was a rotary-percussive drill that
used a combined motion that hammered a rotating drill bit into the surface
to make a hole. The overall purpose of gathering core samples was part of
NASA’s lunar geology studies to learn more about the composition of the Moon
and discover more about its history by looking at different kinds of rocks,
including some from below the surface.
Now, NASA is going back to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis missions
and has a new drill headed to the lunar surface as a commercially delivered
payload via the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The Regolith
and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) is key to locating ice and
other resources on the Moon.
“Honeybee Robotics designed the TRIDENT drill for NASA to sample lunar
regolith,” said Amy Eichenbaum, the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1
(PRIME-1) deputy project manager. “TRIDENT will help understand the physical
properties of the lunar regolith while also allowing analysis of the
resources present in samples taken from various depths.”
TRIDENT is also a rotary-percussive drill, but one major difference between
it and its Apollo counterpart is that TRIDENT does not need astronauts to
operate it manually. Honeybee Robotics originally partnered with NASA
through the Small Business Innovation Research program, a highly competitive
program that encourages small businesses to engage in federal research.
Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) will be the first in-situ
resource utilization demonstration on the Moon. For the first time, NASA
will robotically sample and analyze for ice from below the surface. PRIME-1
will use TRIDENT to drill in a single location at a site with a high
likelihood of having water – whether in liquid or ice form. It will drill
down about 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface, each time bringing up samples
that NASA will analyze with a scientific instrument – the Mass Spectrometer
observing lunar operations (MSolo).
“MSolo will measure water ice and other volatiles released from the sample
brought to the surface by the TRIDENT drill,” said Dr. Janine Captain, the
principal investigator for MSolo. “These measurements will help us start to
understand the distribution of resources on the lunar surface, a key to
enabling a long-term presence on the Moon.”
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| The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) Engineering Development Unit performs recent testing at Honeybee Robotics. TRIDENT is a drill on the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), the first in-situ resource utilization demonstration on the Moon, scheduled to take flight in late 2021 |
Apollo 15 landed near the Hadley Rille, a long, deep channel-like gorge in
the Moon’s surface, which was at the base of the Apennines Mountains to the
north of the Moon’s equator. PRIME-1’s destination is the Moon’s South Pole
- new territory far from all the Apollo landing sites – a location very
interesting because NASA has previously detected water there from space.
However, gathering more accurate data requires PRIME-1, like ALSD, to land
and drill into the surface to examine what is there.
What PRIME-1 discovers will help to update resource models for where
explorers are most likely to find water on the Moon. About a year after the
PRIME-1 mission, NASA will send an exploratory rover – Volatiles
Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER – to the surface. VIPER is
NASA’s first mobile robotic mission to the Moon, and will carry a TRIDENT
drill and scientific instruments that enable it to directly analyze water
ice on the surface and subsurface of the Moon at varying depths and
temperature conditions. VIPER will explore multiple sites on the lunar South
Pole for about 100 days.
PRIME-1 and VIPER will build upon the legacy of Apollo 15 by using drills
and rovers, allowing NASA the chance to look below the surface and detect
what is there. Much like Apollo 15, NASA is preparing to send new
capabilities to the Moon that will enable people to stay there for longer
than ever before, because learning how to find and use water is a key to
living and working on the Moon and other deep space destinations.
“The Apollo missions first introduced the concept of drilling to provide
subsurface understanding of a foreign world,” said Dan Andrews, VIPER
Project Manager. “PRIME-1 and VIPER will expand the state of the art as we
look to a future of sustainable exploration and learning how to live off the
land.”