Planetary surface drills are used for acquiring powder or core samples from rocks and outcroppings. Deployed from a robotic arm or mounted in the belly of a rover, surface drills must acheive high reliability while meeting strict mass, volume, and power constraints. The Honeybee MiniCorer, baselined for the Athena payload on the cancelled 2001 Mars Sample Return mission, has a mass of only 2.8kg and can drill, break off, capture, and eject a 2.5cm-long core in mid-strength basalt.
After over a decade in the field, Honeybee Robotics is an undisputed leader in planetary surface drill design, build, and test:
- High-TRL corers (rotary and rotary/percussive) with clear paths-to-flight
- Large code base of autonomous drilling and fault recovery algorithms
- Unique, patented mechanisms for core breakoff and "butterfly" stablization
- Proprietary drill bit design tools, rework capability for carbide and diamond bits
- One-of-a-kind test facilities, including an extensive rock and regolith library
