Rotary Percussive Auto-Gopher for Deep Drilling and Sampling

The term “rotary percussive autogopher” denotes a proposed addition to a family of apparatuses, based on ultrasonic/sonic drill corers (USDCs), that have been described in numerous previous NASA Tech Briefs articles. These apparatuses have been designed, variously, for boring into, and/or acquiring samples of, rock or other hard, brittle materials of geological interest. In the case of the rotary percussive auto-gopher, the emphasis would be on developing an NTB 05Mech/Mach 0809:Layout 1 7/20/09 9:54 AM Page 38 apparatus capable of penetrating to, and acquiring samples at, depths that could otherwise be reached only by use of much longer, heavier, conventional drilling-and-sampling apparatuses.