For the field tests, a pair of diesel generators powered the drill. Zacny said it consumed an average of about 100 watts of power, fluctuating between 50 and 250 watts, depending on the composition of the gypsum.

A spacecraft on Mars, of course, wouldn't run on diesel. It would likely use a nuclear-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. The Curiosity rover's RTG originally charged the spacecraft's batteries at a rate of about 110 watts. "So you're hitting the energies and powers that can be supplied by a Curiosity-sized power system," Zacny said.

NASA has taken an interest in the Planetary Deep Drill. The project was awarded funding by the agency's Planetary Science and Technology through Analog Research program, PSTAR. Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory attended the USG field test, including Rohit Bhartia, the deputy principal investigator of SHERLOC, an ultraviolet light spectrometer that will fly on the Mars 2020 rover. SHERLOC will be used to search for organics and other signs of past life on Mars.

Bhartia is working with Honeybee to miniaturize a version of SHERLOC to fit inside the Planetary Deep Drill. To do that, the shoebox-sized instrument will need to slim down.

"When we go into a bore hole, we have to get kind of skinny," Bhartia said. "So we have to effectively unfold the optics to fit into a linear structure." His team created a similar instrument that was installed on a drill that tunneled a kilometer beneath the ocean floor. Bhartia said the instrument was re-shaped to fit into a narrow, six-foot-long cylinder.

SHERLOC works by shining an ultraviolet light at a material, which causes the material to shed photons. Those photons can be analyzed to detect organics and reveal the material's mineralogical composition.

A direct detection of organics beneath the surface of Mars or an icy moon would be an important discovery in the search for past and present life beyond Earth. But since organics can also be formed by non-biological processes, scientists wouldn’t be able to confirm the existence of life with a single data point.

"On Earth, it's a different question," Bhartia said. "It's easier to tell, because we know what life on Earth looks like. We don't know what life looks like on other planets.”

The Honeybee team plans to head back to the gypsum quarry for more testing this fall. If things go well, they’ll take the drill to Greenland for more ambitious field tests on actual frozen terrain in 2017.