Meet the REXUS team: MARA

“REXUS is all about learning. Taking a lesson from the dwarves of Moria, we have concluded that drilling in space significantly reduces the risk of awakening an ancient evil.”  MARA team

MARA (Mission for Asteroid Resource Acquisition) is a student experiment from Luleå University of Technology (LTU), Sweden, investigating how material can be sampled from an asteroid in space.

Asteroids are of great scientific and technological interest because they can provide insight into the formation of the Solar System and may become an important source of raw materials for future long-duration space missions.

Before future resource extraction missions can be attempted, suitable asteroids must first be identified and characterised through prospecting.

On Earth, core drilling is a well-established method for prospecting as well as geological research, as it allows a sample to be taken from beneath the surface. In the low-gravity conditions of an asteroid, the process becomes far more challenging.

MARA therefore aims to test whether core drilling is a feasible method for material acquisition by drilling into asteroid simulant during the approximately 120 seconds of reduced gravity provided by the REXUS sounding rocket flight.

MARA experiment

The experiment will carry out a complete autonomous drilling operation during the reduced gravity phase of the rocket flight.

Once activated, the core drill will advance into a block of asteroid simulant. Throughout the drilling process, the experiment will record sensor data, including atmospheric pressure, acceleration and the revolutions per minute (RPM) of the drill.

The experiment will also record video of the drilling process in optical and infrared light to investigate the temperature distribution and heat generation during core drilling in asteroid material.

These measurements will reveal how the drilling process changes in a reduced-gravity environment compared with tests performed on Earth, and whether a stable drilling operation can be maintained while successfully recovering a core sample.

By evaluating both the drilling performance and the quality of the extracted sample, MARA will provide valuable data on the suitability of core drilling for future asteroid prospecting and asteroid exploration.

The MARA team

MARA is being developed by a team of 17 students from LTU at the Space Campus in Kiruna, Sweden. The students are all studying, or are about to begin, master’s degree in Spacecraft Design, Space Engineering or the SpaceMaster programme.

MARA in a nutshell

Experiment	MARA
Objective	Investigate core drilling as a method for material extraction from an asteroid.
University - Country	Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
Website	MARA website
Social media	MARA on Instagram MARA on LinkedIn MARA on TikTok