Backstory

Originally designed for asteroid mining, and adopted by miners on heavy worlds in response to the high gravity

Its impact damage is quite small for such a large tool (it’s not designed as a weapon)

It’s not designed to be swung, but rather placed to let the other gizmos do the work.

The axe head has a sonic pulser that can be used to steadily vibrate its way into the seam before using leverage to fracture the rock.

The laser unit can be used either on low power for precise positioning of the axehead, on medium power for laser Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR), or on high power to drill small holes in asteroids for starting the dig or placing blasting charges.

The ground penetrating radar at the base of the unit can be used to assess the density and composition of the material to be mined. Its range is about 30m in rock, perhaps 1km if used to detect nearby objects in space, but the latter application is very inaccurate as the radar wavelength is quite long in order to penetrate rock.