Penetrator Projectile Tolerates Some Misalignment

A two-body design has enabled an instrumented penetrator projectile to function with increased tolerance to initial misalignment among (a) the longitudinal axis of the penetrator, (b) the velocity of impact on the ground, and (c) the local perpendicular to the surface at the point of impact. In the original application, the two-body penetrator will be launched from a spacecraft to impinge on Mars, where it will sample the soil. The two-body penetrator design is easily adaptable to instrumented penetrators for sampling subsurface materials in sand, soil, mud, snow, or ice in hostile or inaccessible environments on Earth.