Integrated Reentry and Penetrator Vehicle (IRPV) for Subsurface Soil Collection and Analysis on Mars

The continued exploration of Mars is a high priority item within NASA's interplanetary science community. It has long been a desire of this group to define an experiment that would investigate the possible presence and location of water/ice beneath the Martian surface. Until recently, however, there has not been a flight experiment dedicated to achieving this goal. This paper describes a concept design effort conducted at Sandia National Labs in collaboration with JPL and CalTech that has produced a feasible flight system to investigate this question.