Development of a drilling and coring test-bed for lunar subsurface exploration

Drill sampling has been widely employed in extraterrestrial exploration. Since the extraterrestrial environment is uncertain and different from that on the earth, the extraterrestrial drill sampling mission is at risk of failure. Therefore, the principle of drilling and coring in extraterrestrial environment and the structural parameters of special drilling tools should be tested and verified. In this paper, a drilling and coring test-bed for lunar subsurface exploration is proposed. Firstly, this paper analyzes the requirements of the drilling and coring test-bed for lunar subsurface exploration. According the requirements, the test-bed consists of rotary-percussive drilling mechanism, penetrating mechanism, drilling medium container and signal acquisition and control system. Finally, this paper gives the experiments implemented on the test-bed. It has been verified that the principle of drilling and coring for lunar exploration, the design of drilling tools, the algorithms of medium recognition and real-time drilling control are effectual.