Lunar Ice / 3He - why not vaporize it?

[Clive2]

Watching a recent documentary on Discovery Family, the topic covered scientists trying to perfect an ice drill.
This is intended to extract water-ice and frozen Helium 3 at the lunar South Pole.
A problem to overcome is the drill heating and getting stuck when the melted ice re-freezes.
I'm sure the boffins have already ironed out alternative methods, but one way I thought of would be to have a large array of reflectors (mirrors) in orbit above SPA then the sun's energy could be focused to a concentrated area to melt/vaporize the rock-hard surface.
A dedicated probe, or drone, could fly or drive through the expelled gases, vacuumming as it passes through.
It appears that the drilling could take ages to mine a small section, plus the manpower and human habitation required.
My train of thought is that, as long as the gases don't immediately sublimate into space, it may be more immediate, the products paying for further expansion. Feasible or bunk?

 

[3WA]

When they drill ice cores, they’re interested in very fine layers that form through time. Each layer could be a few millimetres thick. Analysing different layers shows change through time. That’s why they want the core intact so they can identify older layers at the bottom and younger layers at the top.

With your method, all the context of chemical changes in different layers will be lost.

Edit: read the section on layers in ice here (about Antarctic glaciers but same principles apply): http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/#SECTION_3