Feasibility Study of Low Mass and Low Energy Consumption Drilling Devices for Future Space (Mining Surveying) Missions

Adam Jan Zwierzyński, Wojciech Teper, Rafał Wiśniowski, Andrzej Gonet, Tomasz Buratowski, Tadeusz Uhl and Karol Seweryn
Additional contact information
Adam Jan Zwierzyński: Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
Wojciech Teper: Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
Rafał Wiśniowski: Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
Andrzej Gonet: Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
Tomasz Buratowski: Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
Tadeusz Uhl: Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
Karol Seweryn: Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences (CBK PAN), Bartycka 18A, 00-716 Warsaw, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 16, 1-17

Abstract: The global climate crisis forces the search for new ecological sources of energy and mining methods. Space mining can solve those problems, but, first, wide geological surveying space missions using drilling methods are necessary. Additionally, drilling methods will be important in geological, life searching, geoengineering, and many other studies of extraterrestrial objects. Space is becoming a new area of possible drilling applications. Designing future space drilling missions requires adapting drilling technologies, not only to the conditions of the space environment, but also to the economic and technological realities of the space industry. The possibility of constructing low mass coring devices with energy consumption below 100 W was investigated in this paper. Minimization of energy consumption and mass of a coring is essential for the device to be used in space missions, when lander instruments supplied by low power electric battery are expected to work reliably and the launch cost (depending of mass) at an economically acceptable level. Some similar devices investigated for the future space missions are known from papers listed in the references. To answer whether or not it is possible to build such devices, the authors performed initial drillability tests. The obtained results are presented in this paper.

Keywords: space mining; space drilling; drilling; space; raw material; geological surveying; fusion; helium-3; energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/16/5005/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/16/5005/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:16:p:5005-:d:614728

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().