A fast and robust surface sample acquisition system for a Venus lander

Abstract

JPL and Honeybee Robotics have designed, built and successfully tested a fast end-to-end sample acquisition and transfer system for the Venusian surface. This full scale prototype system uses a rotary-percussive drill designed to penetrate to a 5 ​cm depth in saddleback basalt in 15 ​min under full Venus surface conditions of 470 ​°C and 92 ​bar pressure and supercritical CO2 atmosphere. The drill features a hollow bit that collects particulate samples created during the drilling process. Sample transfer from drill to lander is done pneumatically using the motive force provided by the high pressure Venus atmosphere to entrain the particles in a high density flow. A cyclone particle separator removes the particles from the flow inside the lander and deposits them into an airlock, while the gas itself flows into a low pressure dump tank. Two samples are provided from the drill, one near the surface and one at 5 ​cm depth. Cross contamination between the near surface and at depth samples is minimized by collecting, but not analyzing, a third sample in between the two primary samples. The airlock is designed to depressurize and cool the particulate samples and then present them to science instruments for composition analysis. The entire drilling and sample transfer process completes in 30 ​min, thereby allowing it to support almost any kind of future short duration Venus lander mission. Results are presented for the first end-to-end drilling and sample transfer experiment conducted in a new specialized test chamber that replicates Venus surface conditions.