fairfolio
Saved Projects

SPIDER: Surface Probe Interplanetary Drill Exploring Regolith

ISEF · 2021 Engineering Mechanics Third Award

Hively, Charlotte · Urbana High School

Overview

NASA’s InSight probe was used to hammer into the surface of Mars in hopes of studying the planet’s internal temperature. Unfortunately the mission ended early, due to the probe penetrating a maximum of 3 centimeters, when it was designed to descend up to 16 feet. The question is why did it penetrate only 3 centimeters? The probe used a hammering mechanism to punch through Mars’ surface, where SPIDER: Surface Probe Interplanetary Drill Exploring Regolith uses a drill mechanism. This difference in design is intended to allow SPIDER’s drill to bore into the surface of Mars, in hopes of descending deeper than NASA’s InSight probe. Additionally, the use of a drill mechanism allows greater potential to drill through multiple types of planetary substances below the surface, including various rocks or ice, which may have been the challenge encountered by InSight.

Awards (1)

Competition history

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google