Dig Deeper, ARDAS, The Search For Life Continues!
September 30, 2019
by Ariel Tokarz
What do you do when you can’t find something just scratching the surface? Dig deeper, of course!
And that’s exactly what NASA is planning to do: probe feet into the crust of Mars to search for life far below the harsh, uninhabitable surface.
ARDAS: The Searcher for Life
ARDAS (the Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies) is a project being undertaken by NASA’s Ames Research Center to search for life beneath Mars’ surface.
The drill is attached to a rover carrying a variety of instruments that can analyze the soil samples that are dug up, searching for potential biosignatures of microbial life.
ARADS is all about preparing NASA to search for life on Mars,
principal investigator Brian Glass said. Development of the ARADS drill and instrument suite is essential, but, according to Glass,
so is figuring out how we actually run the mission.
And that’s why Glass and his team took their rover to Chile.
Chile’s Atacama Desert is the most Mars-like place that exists on Earth: dry and – at first glance, uninhabitable.
ARADS has used this location as a testing ground for the last four years, slowly developing the capacity to detect the remains of ancient life or life that exists underground.
The final test this month will determine the ability of the ARADS system to conduct the complex routines across vast distances: can the rover find the information it needs, without continual support from human researchers?
How to Drill on Another World
There are several roadblocks the rover must be able to overcome on its own. The ARADS drill could get stuck going down, frozen in place by the cold Martian temperatures, or jammed in some hard material.
Pressure and motor movements must be continuously monitored and interpreted by the drill. As it goes, the rover will look for the easiest, and most scientifically interesting, places to dig. Plus it must know how and when to pull back and try again.
All in all, the ARADS drill is rather good at this. According to Thomas Stucky, the sample-handling software lead for the project; it is able to go from dirt to comprehensive data on its own.
All the scientists have to do is point the rover where it needs to dig, tell the drill how deep to go, and the drill will figure out the rest.
This is especially helpful when there’s a nearly twenty-minute delay in communication between scientists on Earth and the rover on Mars.
Looking for Ice – As Well as Life
What else can you do with space drills? If you’re a part of the Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge – a yearly, college-level research project, your space drill is looking for water. Student teams build massive drills similar to the ARADS one.
Their goal is to identify, map, and drill through layers of rock and dirt before extracting and purifying water from large blocks of ice.
According to Shelley Spears, the National Institute of Aerospace’s director of educational outreach, this is an occasion for students to be
at the forefront of one of the most critical [in space resource utilization] ISRU solutions needed for future human space exploration.
ARDAS and the Search for Life: What Does the Future Hold?
When we return to the moon and go on to Mars, we’re going to need water to survive. While it could be carried from Earth, that would be a large and expensive endeavor.
And since large veins of water ice likely exist on the moon and Mars, the ability to make use of such resources is ideal. Besides, life on Mars, like the researchers in the Atacama desert say, like life anywhere else, would need some amount of water to survive.
Where better to search for our galactic neighbors than beneath the surface, where ice and life might dwell?
Further reading on ARDAS and the Search for Life
NASA.gov. NASA is Testing a Drill to Search for Life on Mars – On Its Own. [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/ARADS-drill]
NASA.gov. NASA and Partner Announce Finalists in the 2019 Mars Ice Challenge. [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-and-partner-announce-finalists-in-the-2019-mars-ice-challenge]
Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge [https://specialedition.rascal.nianet.org/]
Photos courtesy of
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