Development of the Brushing, Abrading, Regolith, Core PreView and the Coring Bits for the Mars Sample Return Mission

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) are developing a Mars Sample Return Mission (MSR) campaign of three missions starting with the 2018 Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C) mission. The MAX-C would acquire rock cores and regolith samples into a cache, and leave the cache on the ground. At a later stage this cache would be collected and returned to Earth by another mission. In order to select the most suitable sets of rocks for sample return, the rocks have to be analyzed in situ (as is done on MER). To aid this process, we have developed five bits: a brushing bit, an abrading bit, a core preview bit, a powder and regolith acquisition bit, and finally the core bit for acquiring rock cores ~ 0.7-1 cm diameter and 5-10 cm long for sample return. All these bits would be deployed from the same drill. This paper presents development stages of these bits and testing them with a drill deployed from a robotic arm and inside a Mars chamber. The test rocks used were Kaolinite, limestone, and basalt.