The U.S. space agency NASA will drill deep beneath Mars’ surface to find out whether there is life on the planet. In their pursuit, they will get help from the Norwegian oil technology companies.
To explore Mars, NASA requires knowledge of deep drilling in cold and arid areas. The Norwegian oil technology, with experience in the Arctic that are the closest to the conditions on the red planet, are ready to provide their experience.
Norwegian continental shelf has been a great playground for the development of new technology, and there has been a tremendous innovation in this area, says chairman of Space & Energy, a network platform between the oil and the space sector, Brage W. Johansen.
– To be able to find life, you have to drill thousands of meters. March Institute believes that there may be liquid water and hopefully living microbes under the surface of Mars, says Johansen.
He also said that it is currently drilled with small “dental drills” on Mars and they seek to develop a far advanced technology ready to be used on Mars, says Johansen.
Robotic Technology from Norway
Previously, Robotic Drilling Systems AS- a Norwegian company had started to develop a drilling rig that can think for itself as it explores for crude oil and natural gas. The company also signed an information-sharing agreement with NASA to apply technology concepts used to build the Mars rover Curiosity.
Robotic Drilling Systems hopes to learn from NASA’s Mars rover, which collects data and takes action based on programmed reasoning, and make its own drill rigs smarter. The company is designing a series of robots to take over the repeatable tasks done on rigs by pipehandlers, deckhands and roughnecks.
