Our West Coast Office
Honeybee West
Honeybee Robotics operates a satellite office in the heart of Silicon Valley at the NASA Research Park, adjacent to NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field.
Our proximity to Ames Research Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to the south, helps us to build on our expertise in drilling and sampling for planetary exploration. As our West Coast office expands its capabilities, and as NASA develops its plans for subsurface sampling around the solar system, Honeybee Robotics will be well placed to continue our work at the forefront of planetary sampling.
Currently, our West Coast facility has a laboratory equipped with a drilling rig with a thermal-vacuum chamber capable of drilling under Martian atmospheric conditions of low pressure, low temperature, and CO2 atmosphere to a depth of 15 cm. Earth atmospheric drill tests can be conducted to a depth of 50 cm. We also have geotechnical soil analysis equipment, and access to scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction facilities at the University of California, Berkeley. To date, the West Coast facility has produced a set of prototype drill bits and augers for the Construction & Utilization Resource eXplorer project (CRUX), and has provided research and support for the Rock Abrasion Tool, Mechanized Sample Handler (NASA), and for the Rapid in-Situ Soil Characterization System (Department of Defense).
Contacting Us at Moffett Field:
Honeybee West
NASA Research Park
Building 19, room 1073
Moffett Field, CA 94035
Telephone: (650) 938-8884
Fax: (650) 938-8885