Asteroid mining: the next step toward humanity’s future in space
Uranium, titanium, gold, iron, copper… All of those resources share one common trait. They are non-renewable.
As more and more of earth’s reserves become depleted, but the demand for the resources derived from them grows every day, humanity is reluctant to turn its attention to seeking new, alternative sources of valuable materials and minerals. This time they found this source in the vastness of outer space, specifically in these flying, rocky objects without any atmosphere- asteroids.
We’ve already collected a sample from an asteroid. This mission is happening literally right now as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample, collected from the surface of the asteroid named Bennu. But when it comes to commercial asteroid mining, this realm seems fairly frozen. (maybe not that frozen)
It is because of a couple of reasons, the main of them is not as expected to be technological nonfeasibility (there are a lot of limitations though that will be discussed later) but just because it’s not economically viable. Don’t get me wrong, the technological and infrastructure aspect is huge because we need to get to space, find the right asteroid, mine it, and after return mined material back to Earth (not always) but when combined with the economic side of it, things get slightly more complicated. But first, let’s talk about asteroids.
Asteroids 🌑
Asteroids are rocky, airless remnants left over from the formation of the solar system that have no atmosphere and vary in size and mass.
Asteroid Classification
We can group asteroids based on their composition into three categories:
- The C-type (chondrite), or carbonaceous asteroids, are the most common(about 75% of known asteroids). They contain high concentrations of carbon compounds and silicate compound rocks and some of them may have water in frozen form.
- The S-types (“stony”) consist of silicate materials and metals, such as iron.
- The M-types are metallic (nickel-iron). They have high concentrations of metals. The asteroids’ compositional differences are related to how far from the Sun they formed.
The localization of the asteroid define it into one of the following groups:
Main Belt Asteroids (MBA): The MBAs are localized in the main asteroid belt, which can be found between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars with a great concentration of asteroids. The majority of asteroids known to humanity are MBAs. MBAs are considered the most valuable ones as well.
Trojans: These asteroids share an orbit with a larger planet, but they do not collide with it since they gather around two special points in the orbit (known as the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points). It is at that point that the gravitational pull of the Sun and the planet is balanced by the tendency of Trojans to otherwise “fall out” of orbit. Most trojan asteroids are found on Jupiter’s orbit.
Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA): These objects have orbits that pass relatively close to that of Earth. Some of these asteroids can be categorized as PHA or Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, arguing the prospect of these asteroids making threatening close approaches to Earth.
Commercial Asteroid Mining 🚀
Finally, we’re getting back to commercial asteroid mining.
Asteroid mining offers us the opportunity to revolutionize the supply and availability of many vital resources that are rare or depleted on Earth for humankind, for example, some of the metals, such as palladium and platinum. There’re no alternative sources of these metals on Earth, hence we had to look for in unconventional places, asteroids — one of those. Additionally, the C-type asteroids can be used for mining large quantities of carbon molecules and water (the importance of it I will bring up later).
So it’s time to answer the most tempting question here. How much are the asteroids worth?
Have a look at this table. (for those who are confused by where did type “B” come from, it’s still a carbonaceous asteroid, which is falling into the C-type category. Letter “B” indicates that these objects are spectrally blue. Bennu, the asteroid which was a subject of the OSIRIS-REx mission, is a representative of the “B” type of asteroid. Okay, back to money) You got it right, some of the asteroids have a value of over one hundred trillion dollars and estimated profit as well more than 100 trillion dollars. Of course, I’ve picked the most valuable asteroids to show you but still, this is insane. Just keep in mind that the global GDP amounted to around 100 trillion dollars in 2022. So it means a single asteroid has higher monetary value than all finished goods and services of the whole of civilization per year. But nowadays these are examples of what might be in the future, as the current technological approaches to mining in space and even propulsion systems that are deployed in modern rockets are simply not suitable for such missions. The logistics and cost of transport will be also the major contributors which stop us from investing in missions like this.
Look at this table now. It contains more realistic options for us, as these asteroids are way closer to the Earth compared to the ones I’ve shown you in the previous table. However, take a closer look at the “value” and “est. profit” columns. The estimated profit is more than twice less than the original value of an object. Implying that the total investment that will have to be put into everything will surpass the profit which can be made from mining the selected asteroid.
Let’s highlight again several barriers to asteroid mining which can be identified from the information above:
- Transportation
The transportation of materials with current propulsion technologies both to and from outer space is unimaginably expensive (as we might have already noticed). In today’s world, chemical-based propulsion (that uses liquid or solid fuel as a source of energy) is the most common type of propulsion system embedded into rockets. But it’s not enough for us. The increase in mass of a spacecraft demands the corresponding increase of fuel it requires, and therefore the heavier it gets; this creates a loop that drives costs up. To break down this loop, the replacement of chemical-based propulsion should be considered. These alternative propulsion systems already exist and are even being deployed. In the case of ion thrusters, they are used as a primary propulsion engine for orbiting satellites; in the case of nuclear propulsion, the most successful deployment of nuclear propulsion to date is in defense navy applications for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and submarines. Some cool news: NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced in Jan 2023 about collaboration to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, which can be used by NASA in future crewed missions to Mars. Another concept that might mitigate the cost of transportation is reusable rockets. A great exmaple is Falcon 9 engineered by SpaceX, which is a first orbital class rocket capable of reflight.
2. Logistics
Asteroids in the main asteroid belt are very far from Earth, and a one-way trip would take weeks, months, or even (and most likely) years. However, even if we were able to solve the propulsion problems, managing large-scale, long-term mining operations from such a distance would require extensive logistical planning.
3. Capital costs
Just imagine we were able to solve all of the problems both logistics and the problems of transportation through technological innovations but now we have nothing else to do but to make huge investement. Some economists estimate the lower bound on capital costs for a small operation at over $100 billion, which includes R&D, prospecting, construction, engineering, and time.
Now it’s time to turn our attention to technological aspect ⚙️
Let me introduce existing tech approaches to asteroid mining :
- Drilling
Think of drilling on Earth, but on Asteroid. That’s exactly what it means. This approach adopts the knowledge of drilling techniques utilized on Earth and designs drilling technologies that will be suitable for unique conditions in space. An asteroid drilling mission would involve a spacecraft equipped with a robotic drilling apparatus. The drilling system includes components such as a drill bit, which might use a rotary or percussive method to penetrate the asteroid’s surface, sample collection mechanisms, and tools for processing and handling the extracted material.
2. Optical mining
In optical mining, the light, highly concentrated with help of the special mirrors, from a luminous object (Sun) in a form of beam is used for drilling holes, excavating, disrupting, and shaping the asteroid. A considerable part of the optical mining approach is the utilization of a containment bag that will enclose inside the asteroid, enabaling realtively easy material collection.
3. Redirection
Some valuable asteroids are located far away from Earth’s orbit. To resolve this issue, people might apply a redirection of the asteroid’s orbit that will eventually bring the asteroid closer to Earth. It might sound like a fragment from a sci-fi story, but NASA’s DART mission in October 2022 proved that it is now a part of our reality. DART or Double Asteroid Redirection Test aimed to impact the moonlet of the binary asteroid system Didymos, known as “Dimorphos” or “Didymoon,” to test the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor technique for altering the course of an asteroid. The mission was successful.
These technological approaches are only the main ones, which where been under intense development for the last decades. As more and more new technological breakthroughs emerge on the horizon, there’s a set of complications that space brings with itself that should be taken into account:
- “Who is in charge?”: While crewed asteroid mining could be a reasonable option for water or other resources extraction that is needed for sustaining space exploration missions, the creation of fully robotic, autonomous systems, which is great as it eliminates the need for supplies of water, food, etc., might be a challenging (and expensive) task, especially if the aim is scaled to a commercial level. For a remotely controlled drone (especially if the operator is on Earth), another problem arises, due to simple physics law. The message sent from one party to another cannot instantaneously be delivered as it will take some time to cross such a large distance. Therefore while carrying out the procedures, there would be a delay in when the signal is received, opening a door for unpredictable and detrimental mission situations.
- Gravity: Asteroids do have gravity, however, it is so weak that if you try to step your feet onto the surface and walk instead you’ll start floating away from it, having little to no chance to come back on the asteroid’s surface. Hence for the success of mining operations, we should figure out an appropriate way to attach the technology to an asteroid.
- Power source: On top of everything, we need energy. The powering source should be thoughtfully chosen to overcome the limitation of the space environment. For now, we have two of the most promising options: sun and nuclear energy. In outer space, solar cells will be way more efficient than on Earth because the light coming from the Sun won’t have any obstacles like an atmosphere, for example. However, the distance from the Sun and not having direct sunlight all the time might negatively influence the performance of the solar cells. Nuclear reactors offer a potential solution, however, safety, engineering, and other complexities might be addressed before they can be implemented. One of the arising problems we might encounter with nuclear reactors is obviously radiation, space debris, etc.
In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) 🌌
Probably from all of the words above you have derived a conclusion that asteroid mining is not an option for humankind, but it is. What are the best places to obtain the materials that are so scarce on Earth? Or what to do if we need materials in space? Should we keep bringing them from the ground?
“Asteroids” is the answer.
There is just one thing that we need to ensure is that we have addressed all of the problems that I have mentioned previously, and that we have developed the technology that will be most effective for us, and we are developing one of these technologies at the moment by the way.
In fact, it is humanity’s adoption of the right approach to mining asteroids that will lay the foundation for everything. And with this right approach, asteroid mining will be a game changer.
It’s kind of obvious why but let me repeat this truth: “It’s hard to get things to and bring them from space, hard and expensive”. That’s why we’re trying to build space elevators, that’s why we’re trying to look for less costly options for propulsion, that why SpaceX started to use reusable rockets. Simply if there’s no action to meet the need of the space industry, we will keep using an excessive amount of everything which we value so much: non-renewable resources and money. For us, bringing back to Earth the materials from Asteroids, even valuable ones, will cost much more, causing the price of materials themselves to crash to almost zero. Therefore the best option we have is “what was mined in space, will stay in space” or in-situ resource utilization. With this we’re hitting two birds with one stone: not spending on bringing materials to space stations and not spending on transporting the mined materials to Earth. Instead, we follow ISRU principles, which involve using resources available from asteroids to support space missions or settlements.
Fortunately, humankind’ve realized this true soon enough, therefore the majority of exisitng asteroid mining companies and startups are focusing their effors on creating tools for mining the materials that can be quite abundant on Earth but very valuable in space. And one of these is water.
Water — the essense of gold rush in space🌊
The cost of transportation makes water one of the most expensive thing for interplanetary missions.
Remember C-type asteroids? As we know, these asteroids are rich in carbonaceous materials. They thought to contain many organic compounds and what is the most importantly water, which is crucial resource for future space exploration and colonization. Water can be used not only as a vital liquid for live beings but also be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, providing a potential source of rocket fuel and life support systems. Imagine having multiple re-fueling stations for spacecrafts, heading to explore solar system, that derive fuel directly from asteroids! The best technological approach for water extraction that currently exists is optical mining. As was stated by TransAstra, “Optical Mining will enable TransAstra to harvest thousands of tons of water and other materials for rocket propulsion in space within a decade, an opportunity for massive cost reduction for deep space human exploration and space industrialization.”
To conclude, ISRU will diversify the opportunities in future space exploration and colonization. That’s exactly how humankind can make another step forward toward sci-fi ideas, like colonizing other planets or exploring the hidden side of the solar system.
Future 🔭
The concept of space mining, particularly asteroid mining, has captured the brightest minds of humanity long ago. However, the challenges emerging from economic considerations and space technology development hit the breaks, slowing down the evolvement of the industry. And it’s good. The venturing into yet unknown, obscure realm require cautious approach. Rushing into this new territory without thorough consideration of potential complications would be not much of a wise decision.
As Earth’s reserves continue to deplete while the demand for resources increases, the unresistant call to find solutions grows. On top, the conventional approcahes to mining resulted in harmful environmental impacts. Here, asteroid mining is a possible solution that will not only meet the resource demands of humanity both in space and on Earth, but also be a significant step towards a more sustainable future.
The technological foundation of space mining extend far beyond mere space stations and machinery. Just as emerging technologies like ChatGPT and quantum computers have revolutionized various aspects of our lives, these innovations can also shape the trajectory of asteroid mining. For example, we might see the integration and application of artificial intelligence in analyzing asteroid surfaces, predicting their value, and informing decision-making processes.
The prospects for space mining are indeed promising. However, the future of space mining becomes even brighter not only thanks to rare materials that asteroid possesses but to the most common ones. Element such as hydrogen, which constitute a big portion of our universe, become exceptionally valuable when in space due to the astronomical costs of transporting resources from Earth’s surface. Such elements, if mined in space, could redefine the economics of resource acquisition beyond our planet.
When the future arrives we must be ready, and trust me it never stops just here. Space mining requires international collaboration. The cooperation between coutries is an important step, which might lead to the establishment of new international laws or even the introduction of asteroid mining taxes. What remains crucial is the allocation of resources to foster global equity and fairness both on Earth and in the outer vastness of space.
The space mining, appearing in this world as simple idea, now is close to become a reality with game-changing potential. As we navigate this frontier, it is crucial to step carefully, making use of emerging technologies and global cooperation to ensure that our journey into space mining lead us toward nothing else but a sustainable and prosperous future.
Thank you so much for reading this article!
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