Heritage-rich family of rotary-percussive drills, rock abrasion tools, and sample acquisition devices with flight history spanning NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers through Perseverance, TRIDENT lunar drill, and Dragonfly Titan sampler.
Planetary Sampling and Drilling Systems
Heritage-rich family of rotary-percussive drills, rock abrasion tools, and sample acquisition devices with flight history spanning NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers through Perseverance, TRIDENT lunar drill, and Dragonfly Titan sampler.
Description
Honeybee Robotics has developed and delivered planetary sampling and drilling systems for nearly four decades, accumulating unmatched flight heritage across multiple planetary bodies. Their work covers the full sample acquisition chain: regolith collection at the surface, sub-surface drilling and coring, sample containment and transfer, and delivery to onboard instruments. Technologies have flown on Mars, operated on the lunar surface, and are under development for Saturn's moon Titan and Mars's moon Phobos.
Key flight heritage includes the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) flown on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity (landed 2004), the Icy Soil Acquisition Device (Phoenix Scoop) for the 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander, the Sample Manipulation System for Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover, landed August 2012), and sample handling hardware aboard Mars 2020's Perseverance. These instruments collectively represent the state of the art in Mars surface sample acquisition and have returned unprecedented scientific insight into Martian geology and habitability.
Currently under development is TRIDENT (The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain), a rotary-percussive lunar drill designed for NASA's VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) to reach depths exceeding 1 meter in lunar regolith and ice-bearing substrate at the poles. TRIDENT weighs 20 kg (excluding harness) with avionics of 5.4 kg and peak power consumption up to 200 W. For NASA's Dragonfly mission to Titan (targeting arrival ~2034), Honeybee is developing DrACO (Drill for the Acquisition of Complex Organics) to collect organic-rich Titan surface material. For JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, Honeybee shipped a Phobos pneumatic sampling system in February 2023.
Honeybee is also part of the Blue Origin-led Human Landing System team (Artemis program) under a $3.4 billion NASA contract, contributing robotics and sample handling capabilities. The company has delivered more than 1,000 projects to government and commercial customers.
Specifications
| Drill types | Rotary-percussive (TRIDENT), rotary coring, pneumatic |
|---|---|
| Trident depth capability | >1 m |
| Trident total mass | 20 kg (drill) + 5.4 kg (avionics) |
| Trident peak power | 200 W |
| Trident nominal power | 30–40 W |
| Mars heritage | Spirit & Opportunity (RAT), Phoenix (scoop), Curiosity (SMS), Perseverance |
| Lunar missions | VIPER (TRIDENT drill), Blue Ghost Mission 1 (PlanetVac) |
| Titan mission | NASA Dragonfly (DrACO drill, ~2034 arrival) |
| Phobos mission | JAXA MMX pneumatic sampler (shipped Feb 2023) |
| Total projects delivered | >1,000 |
| Customers | NASA, JAXA, Blue Origin |
| HQ | Longmont, Colorado (also Altadena, CA; Greenbelt, MD) |