High Temperature Venus Drill and Sample Delivery System

Under Phase 1, we investigated HT Drill, HT Trencher, and Pneumatic Sample Delivery. We found that HT Trencher and Blower-based pneumatic system won't be feasible or carried high risk associated with development of HT cutter materials. Rotary drill also did not penetrate hard rocks. For Phase 2, we propose HT Rotary-Percussive drill and 'suction' based pneumatic sample delivery. Honeybee is also submitting a separate Phase 2 for 3 DOF HT arm. If that proposal gets selected, the arm will deploy the drill and deposit the sample. The pneumatic system would still be needed to move the sample into an instrument. We plan to design and build TRL 5 system and incorporate HT motors developed by Honeybee under prior SBIR projects. The demonstration will be done in a HT chamber. We will investigate possibility of testing at NASA JPL's Venus chamber. The demo will include drilling into hard rocks and sample transfer to a mock up instrument.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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