NASA: Red Planet looks a little gray inside, USA Today
“This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock on another planet,” says mission sample chief Louise Jandura of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.”
Luna 16, WIkipedia
“At perilune at 05:12 UT on 20 September [1970], the main braking engine was fired, initiating the descent to the lunar surface. … Less than an hour after landing, at 06:03 UT, an automatic drill penetrated the lunar surface to collect a soil sample. After drilling for 7 minutes, the drill reached a stop at 35 centimeters depth and then withdrew its sample and lifted it in an arc to the top of the spacecraft, depositing the lunar material in a small spherical capsule mounted on the main spacecraft bus.”
Keith’s note: So, is this JPL statement about the whole (increasingly pointless) “planet” Vs “moon” or a “rock Vs “soil (regolith)” definition issue – or are they actually unaware of what Luna 16 (and 20) did 40+ years ago?
Curiosity Rover Drilling Debate, earlier post

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

24 replies on “Forgetting/Ignoring Space Drilling History”

  1. I totally agree, everyone who is actively working on these missions should have previous missions’ accomplishments as common knowledge.

    1. big deal, they landed a truck size instrument on mars autonomously with a payload of real science instruments including quadropole mass spectrometer,a tuneable laser spectrometer, a gas chromatograph, an x ray diffraction system, a camera that fires laser pulses at distant rocks and analysises the chemical signatures of the debri, an alpha particle x-ray spectrometer, a bunch of cameras, atmospheric sensors, environmental sensors, radiation sensors and a drill bit!
      Oh my, with all that equipment they drilled a hole!   But alas it was not the first hole drilled outside of earth’s atmosphere.

      So what if NASA has a science laboratory operating on mars… Mars Science Lab is soooo last year.  I’m much more excited about the big press release coming up about that rich guy who wants to send a tin can in orbit around mars! Oh boy Talk, Talk, Talk!!! and over 100 comments!  more Talk Talk Talk…   

      This country is not interested in real science and technology just hype.

  2. I think the latter is true, the writers of the press release are not aware of past achievements. Everyone that is writing this stuff for release should be totally up on all past missions.

  3. The moon is not a planet. Their press release states a simple fact. People who contribute to successful planetary missions are very precise in their use of language, in my experience. There is a huuuuge difference in the difficulty of achieving something on the Moon versus doing it on another planet.  This is not a “distinction without a difference”.  I’m not sure why anyone would want to minimize this achievement or question the knowledge of the Curiosity team based upon this press release.

    1. There is a huuuuge difference in the difficulty of achieving something on the Moon versus doing it on another planet.

      I am curious, please describe this huuuuge difference between doing this on Mars in 2013 vs doing in on the Moon during the 1970’s.

      1.  Certainly.  The difference is that the moon is not a planet.  Therefore, drilling on the moon is not drilling on another planet.

          1.  Why do we have to care what Moon or Mars “thinks”?
            Protip: these objects are incapable of thought.

      2. When the first person walks on Mars, he’ll be the first person to set foot on another planet.  Right?

        Difficulty is not important here.  They made a statement, and the statement is correct because the moon is not a planet. Short and simple.
        Further, the statement is not the core of their achievement. It’s just a minor boasting point. The main deal is that the type of sample gathering and analysis done by MSL is very impressive, and interesting to read about.

        People need to let this one go already.  They didn’t say “beyond earth”, or “in space”, or anything, and they did not imply that lunar missions did not drill.

      3. ” please describe this huuuuge difference between doing this on Mars in 2013 vs doing in on the Moon during the 1970’s”

        The biggest difference is in the difference between autonomy(done now with microprocessors) and telepresence (done via radio link with seconds of time lag).

        Even Lunar prospector (moon orbiter) had NO PROCESSOR that controlled the spacecraft. When a thruster needed to be fired, they just sent the command to fire the thruster X-seconds before it needed to be fired with the OWLT calculated beforehand.  Modern deep space spacecraft have very sophisticated sequence engines and fault protection software. When your OWLT is more than 10 minutes, you cannot operate via telepresence unless you are VERY patient….

        So the huge difference is in modern processors, and “smart” software.

        1. Ever hear of a state machine?  Event sequencers and state machines were used with a simple command to start the sequence.  You don’t need fault detection in a completely deterministic system.  These were used in the days before software driven hardware platforms.  I worked on vehicles in 1980 that had no computer and did a whole raft of complicated maneuvers as part of early missile defense tests.  Everything was pre-simulated on the ground with Analog computers.  After running the Lunar Orbiter tapes I can tell you the command sequences for a lot of its actions, and they were quite short compared to what actually happened.

          I think that you vastly overestimate the value of computers in doing something like drilling in the ground.  Not really impressed with that argument.

          1. The difference is in the fault protection software that is employed now. It is vastly superior to a simple “state machine” and can “think for itself” when out of radio range of Earth.  Very few modern digital computer systems are truly “deterministic” yet can work around faults many layers deep. Older analog computers could not do that.

            A perfect example is on the MER rovers. When they detected a fault in the motor drive system, it would stop what it was doing and in some cases swap subsystems before giving up and “phoning home”.

            MGS killed itself trying to recover while out of DSN radio contact. If it had been around the moon, that would not have been as serious of a problem.

          2. Five lunar orbiter missions, all successful in a 12 month period.

            How many missions have we sent to mars in a similar amount of time?

      4. My guess is that any disagreement you and I would have on this topic would hinge on our different understandings of what you meant by the word “this”. If “this” means physically working on a rock to get a sample for analysis, then the processes would probably be pretty similar. If “this” includes a scientific analysis of the sample with sufficient quality and rigor that it can help lead us to resolve important questions about the heavenly body in question, then I think we could agree that the difference really is pretty big.

        1. The Lunar mission actually returned a sample to the Earth, on top of the drilling, without a computer controller, something still considered too expensive to do on Mars today with all of our high tech FDIR systems.

          It’s also my understanding that the Curiosity sequencer for all of the deployments of hardware during its entry and landing were burned into an FPGA, basically recreating a 50 year old timer/state machine sequencer.

          1. Entry descent and landing was run by software on the flight computer. Sure there are FPGAs, but not really working as a sequencer in the clockwork timer sense, unless you count things like PCI bus interfaces. The flight computer has to do all the EDL nav, using data from IMUs and the landing radar to throttle rockets, deploy bridles, do a guided atmosphere entry

  4. I’m not aware that Luna 16, which was a sample return mission, had a rock drill, the purpose of Luna 16 was to obtain a “soil sample”. I would say that the statement about the first rock drill on another planet is correct, regardless of the planet vs moon debate.

    1. From: ZARYA: Soviet, Russian and International Space Flight
      [ http://www.zarya.info/Diaries/Luna/Luna16.php ]

      “Luna  16 was the first automated vehicle to land on the Moon and return a sample of material to Earth.  It was not, however, the first retrieval of lunar soil sample though.  The Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions had already taken place by the time Luna 16 reached the Moon.“
      —
      “The soil sample was taken by rotating the drill head by one hundred and eighty degrees, lowering the drill arm to the surface and extracting a vertical core.  On returning to the rest position, the sample was transferred to the return capsule through a self-sealing hatch and was then sent back to Earth.“
      —
      “1970 Sep 20: Luna 16 uses a hollow drill to collect a 35 centimetre long core sample of the lunar surface — the operation takes seven minutes and the sample weighs 101 grammes.“
      —

      Although it does not say so specifically, the wording suggests that the drill collected a “lunar soil sample,” and not necessarily a sample of drilled “rock.”  There is no reference to either rock or reducing the sample to smaller grains.

      We do know that Apollo 11 brought back rocks and regolith, while Apollo 12 brought back rocks, drilled rock, and regolith.  Luna  16 was the first automated vehicle to return lunar samples to Earth.

  5. The other word to discuss is “drill”;
    both Opportunity and Spirit are equipped with rock abrasion tools. It could be
    argued that even the admittedly shallow quarter inch or so hole still counts.

  6. Is it simply a matter of wording between moon (satellite) and planet?  After all there not really much difference between a moon and planet now days.
    Also give credit that they might forgot the full details of Luna 16 and 20 40 years  ago. Even I had forgotten those details and I can remember those missions myself

  7. What Louise Jandura said is available for anyone to hear on the recording of the Feb. 20 news briefing at http://www.ustream.tv/recor… . Her comments begin about 8:30 into the conference call with reporters. She specifically mentions the lunar and Venus drilling, the rock abrasion tools on Spirit and Opportunity and the rasp on Phoenix, and she uses this correct wording to describe Curiosity’s accomplishment:”This is the first time any robot, fixed or mobile, has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars. In fact, this is the first time any rover has drilled into a rock to collect a sample anywhere but on Earth.”  

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