GLASGOW engineers have mined for coal in Lanarkshire, diamonds in South Africa and oil in the North Sea.

Now they hope to drill for water on Mars.

Experts at Glasgow University are developing a ultrasonic tool that can pulverize rock – but is light enough to fire off to other planets on the cheap.

Their invention is one of several major high-tech breakthroughs being made as city engineers line up for the 21st Century Space Race, with new international missions to the Moon and Mars to lift off soon.

Crucially Patrick Harkness – the main force behind Glasgow's "ultrasonic drill" – and his colleagues reckons the technology could have uses closer to home, in medicine.

But in space the key to his drill is that it does not need to be pressed hard against the rock. Low gravity on Mars means that small landers are almost weightless, and could not use a traditional drill that needs some downforce to penetrate. The ultrasonic drill can therefore give smaller, cheaper spacecraft the ability to explore deep beneath the surface – something that only large spacecraft could do today.

Dr Harkness today explained: "There is an American spaceship on the way to Mars right now, the Curiosity. It is about the size of a Mini.

"As space probes go, it is enormous and has a big drill to cut through rock in the traditional manner.

"You need a really beefy spacecraft to apply the device."

Curiosity, which passed the half way mark in its journey to Red Planet this week, is a Mars rover the size of a car and looks much like the Moon buggies of the Apollo missions.

But there are space agencies of Russia and the European Union are now talking about carrying out some joint Mars missions over the next few years.

Their bid is to look for evidence of life on Mars, or the water that could sustain life. And that will mean digging in to the planet to see what is there, taking core samples.

Space experts believe Mars may have been wetter and warmer in the past and they think there could be evidence of this just under the surface of the planet.

That is exactly the kind of job for Dr Harkness's ultrasonic drill. He said: "Through developing this engineering solution we are allowing scientists to get information about the subsurface of Mars for a much smaller spacecraft."

The Glasgow team has already tested their drill on lunar landscape of Tenerife in the Canaries. It seems to work.

Ultimately ultrasonic drills could be hammering in to the ground to mine resources – including those currently running out on the Earth –from other planets.

Dr Harkness is one of more than 40 scientists and engineers who are now pooling their knowledge at the University in a special "space cluster".

There are more working on similar fields at Strathclyde University.

Yesterday we featured the graduate students from both universities who become the first from Scotland to launch their own experiment in to space.

But it isn't just space experts who are talking to each other. Engineers working in aerospace are also sharing their expertise with other scientists. That has always been the case.

Life support systems in hospitals, after all, owe a lot to developments for the Apollo moon missions.

Ultrasound in medicine was pioneered in Glasgow after doctors at the Queen Mum's maternity hospital at Yorkhill realised they could use the ultrasound systems pioneered in the shipyards to view unborn babies.

Now medics at Glasgow University, for example, are already wondering if the technology could be used to take bone samples.

Dr Harkness explained: "Right now if you have to have something injected in to your bone it is really painful, they have to push it in your bone. You can do serious injury by doing this.

"With this ultrasonic technique we have been developing we could use bone sampling using the same technique so you would not need to use as much force."

Margaret Lucas, Glasgow University's Professor of Ultrasonics, is watching with interest.

She said: "The research in ultrasonic drilling and coring is also contributing to the ongoing research activity at the university in innovative ultrasonic devices for ortho- paedic surgical procedures. For both of these very different applications, the need is to penetrate difficult to cut materials with high accuracy, low force and with minimal heating."

The big space countries are still making big kit – the Americans satellites, the Russians rockets.

But Scotland is increasingly embracing "small is beautiful" technology as it tries to capture a bigger share of the fast-growing $250bn worldwide space market.

Glasgow firm Clyde Space, for example, will launch its first £500,000 UKube1 satellite next year, a box of tricks that measures little more than a foot cubed.

"What we've done from the outset is to recognise that although it's a small country, Scotland has loads of capability and lots of fantastic companies and university research laboratories," said Ross White, senior executive of Aerospace, Defence and Marine, at Scottish Enterprise.

"We're seeing real clusters of companies working together, universities working together and, even better, companies and universities working hand in hand on R&D projects.

"From a Scottish perspective, we have all the ingredients for real success in the space market."