Probing Mars, charging cars

Drawing on the same voltage as a vacuum cleaner, the charger can be plugged into any household socket without blowing a fuse.

The key lies in the tiny transformer, similar to the box on your laptop cable, which converts power from the grid to maintain a stable supply and cut charging times.

Space drill developed by Zaptec for ESA

Norwegian company Zaptec are also developing a space drill under ESA funding, with the transformer powering a plasma drill for slicing through rock.

“Rotary drills are inefficient in space,” points out Zaptec’s CEO, Brage Johansen. “They suffer friction in the borehole and require heavy equipment.”

ESA is funding Zaptec’s feasibility study to assess if their plasma Zapdrill is more effective or will drill deeper in our search for life on other planets.

“Right now we’re scratching the surface,” explains ESA’s Sanjay Vijendran. “With today’s technology we can go down about 2 m for missions such as our ExoMars rover. But we want to get to at least 10 m with the same size drill.

“We believe Mars might have underground water which could potentially harbour life, but so far we’ve not had the technology to explore deep enough.”

Space scientists have been looking for a better way and the answer might lie in a flash of lightning.

Plasma drill on Mars with Zaptec plasma drill

Plasma is the hot, electrically charged gas that powers the Sun and constitutes most of our Universe. On Earth it manifests as lightning, electrical sparks and the auroras over our poles. In its human-made form, plasma provides the light in fluorescent tubes and now the cutting edge of a space drill.

“The plasma drill is the closest thing to cutting rock with a lightsabre,” smiles Brage. “Our drill head produces small bolts of lightning 1–5 cm long that pulverise the rock from within.”

This lightweight drill requires no weighted bits or heavy generators. “On Mars we have only 100 W available and we can run the whole system below that using solar power and small batteries.”

Engineers have been crushing stone in laboratories with ‘lightning’ for half a century but only recently has progress in microelectronics enabled them to develop a drill.

Zaptec’s innovation lies in the compact transformers that provide the voltage for the plasma spark, thanks to advanced cooling techniques and miniaturisation.