"Asteroidining is the speculative extraction of resources from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-Earth objects.
Notable asteroid mining issues include the expensive expense of spaceflight, the unreliable detection of asateroids that are appropriate for mining, and the challenges of extracting useable material in a space environment.
Asteroid sample return research missions, such as Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, and in-progress OSIRIS-REx, illustrate the challenges of collecting ore from space using current technology. As of 2023, less than 7 grammes of asteroid material have been successfully returned to Earth from space. In progress, missions promise to increase this amount to approximately 60 grammes (two ounces). Asteroid research missions are complex endeavours and return a tiny amount of material (less than 1 milligrammeme Hayabusa, 100 milligrammeme Hayabusa2, 60 grammes planned OSIRIS-REx) relative to the size and expense of these projects ($300 million Hayabusa, $800 million Hayabusa2, $1.16 billion OSIRIS-REx).
After a boom of interest in the 2010s, asteroid mining plans have evolved to more distant long-term aims, and some 'asteroid mining' companies have turned to more general-purpose propulsion technology.
The history of asteroid mining is brief but contains a slow growth. Ideas of which asteroids to mine, how to extract resources, and what to do with those resources vary throughout the decades.
Before 1970, asteroid mining existed largely within the realm of science fiction. Stories such as Worlds of If, Scavengers in Space, and Miners in the Sky told stories about the conceived dangers, motives, and experiences of mining asteroids. At the same time, many researchers in academia speculated about the profits that could be gained from asteroid mining, but they lacked the technology to seriously pursue the idea.
The 1969 Moon Landing spurred a wave of scientific interest in human space activity far beyond the Earth's orbit. As the decade continued, more and more academic interest surrounded the topic of asteroid mining. A good deal of serious academic consideration was aimed at mining asteroids located closer to Earth than the main asteroid belt. In particular, the asteroid groups Apollo and Amor were considered. These groups were chosen not only because of their proximity to Earth but also because many at the time thought they were rich in raw materials that could be refined.
Despite the rush of interest, many in the space research community were conscious of how little was known about asteroids and recommended a more methodical and systematic approach to asteroid mining.
Academic interest in asteroid mining remained into the 1980s. The idea of targeting the Apollo and Amor asteroid groups still had some popularity. However, by the late 1980s, interest in the Apollo and Amor asteroid groups was being supplanted with interest in the moons of Mars, Phobos, and Deimos.
Organisations like NASA begin to formulate concepts of how to process materials in space and what to do with the materials that are hypothetically gathered from space.
New reasons develop for pursuing asteroid mining. These arguments tend to focus around environmental problems, such as worry over humans overconsuming the Earth's natural resources and seeking to collect energy from the sun in space.
In the same decade, NASA is working to define what materials on asteroids could be beneficial for extraction. These materials include free metals, volatiles, and bulk soil.
As resource depletion on Earth becomes more real, the idea of extracting valuable elements from asteroids and returning these to Earth for profit, or using space-based resources to build solar-powered satellites and space habitats, becomes more attractive. Hypothetically, water processed from ice could refuel orbiting propellant depots.
Although asteroids and Earth accreted from the same starting materials, Earth's relatively stronger gravity pulled all heavy siderophilic (iron-loving) elements into its core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago. This left the crust depleted of such valuable elements until a rain of asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals like gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, and tungsten (some flow from core to surface does occur, e.g., at the Bushveld Igneous Complex, a famously rich source of platinum-group metals). [citation needed] Today, these metals are mined from the Earth's crust, and they are essential for economic and technological progress. Hence, the geologic history of Earth may very well set the stage for a future of asteroid mining.
In 2006, the Keck Observatory announced that the binary Jupiter trojan 617 Patroclus and possibly large numbers of other Jupiter trojans are likely extinct comets and consist largely of water ice. Similarly, Jupiter-family comets and possibly near-Earth asteroids that are extinct comets might also provide water. The process of in-situ resource utilisation—using materials native to space for propellant, thermal management, tankage, radiation shielding, and other high-mass components of space infrastructure—could lead to radical reductions in its cost. Although it is unknown whether these cost reductions could be achieved and, if achieved, would offset the enormous infrastructure investment required,
From an astrobiological perspective, asteroid prospecting could provide scientific data for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Some astrophysicists have suggested that if advanced extraterrestrial civilizations employed asteroid mining long ago, the hallmarks of these activities might be detectable.
An important factor to consider in target selection is orbital economics, in particular the change in velocity (Δv) and travel time to and from the target. More of the extracted native material must be expended as propellant in higher Δv trajectories, thus less returned as payload. Direct Hohmann trajectories are faster than Hohmann trajectories assisted by planetary and/or lunar flybys, which in turn are faster than those of the Interplanetary Transport Network, but the reduction in transfer time comes at the cost of increased Δv requirements. [citation needed]
The Easily Recoverable Object (ERO) subclass of near-earth asteroids is considered a likely candidate for early mining activity. Their low Δv makes them suitable for use in extracting construction materials for near-Earth space-based facilities, greatly reducing the economic cost of transporting supplies into Earth orbit.
The table above illustrates a comparison of Δv requirements for various missions. In terms of propulsion energy requirements, a voyage to a near-Earth asteroid compares favourably to alternative mining missions.
An example of a prospective target for an early asteroid mining expedition is 4660 Nereus, believed to be mostly enstatite. This body has a very low Δv compared to lifting materials from the surface of the moon. However, it would need a much longer round-trip to return the material.
Multiple types of asteroids have been recognized, however the three primary types would include the C-type, S-type, and M-type asteroids:
A class of easily retrievable objects (EROs) was identified by a group of researchers in 2013. Twelve asteroids made up the initially identified group, all of which could be potentially mined with present-day rocket technology. Of the 9,000 asteroids searched in the NEO database, these twelve could all be brought into an Earth-accessible orbit by changing their velocity by less than 500 metres per second (1,800 km/h; 1,100 mph). The dozen asteroids range in size from 2 to 20 metres (10 to 70 feet).
The B612 Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation with headquarters in the United States dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes. As a non-governmental organisation, it has conducted two lines of related research to help detect asteroids that could one day strike Earth and find the technological means to divert their path to avoid such collisions.
The foundation's 2013 goal was to design and build a privately financed asteroid-finding space telescope, Sentinel, hoping to launch it in 2017–2018. The Sentinel's infrared telescope, once parked in an orbit similar to that of Venus, is designed to help identify threatening asteroids by cataloguing 90% of those with diametres larger than 140 metres (460 ft), as well as surveying smaller Solar System objects. After NASA terminated their $30 million funding agreement with the B612 Foundation in October 2015 and the private fundraising did not achieve its goals, the Foundation eventually opted for an alternative approach using a constellation of much smaller spacecraft, which is under study as of June 2017 [update]. NASA/JPL's NEOCam has been proposed instead.
Processing in situ for the purpose of extracting high-value minerals will reduce the energy requirements for transporting the materials, although the processing facilities must first be transported to the mining site. In situ mining will involve drilling boreholes, injecting hot fluid or gas, allowing the useful material to react or melt with the solvent, and extracting the solute. Due to the weak gravitational fields of asteroids, any activities, like drilling, will cause large disturbances and form dust clouds. These might be confined by some dome or bubble barrier. Or else some means of rapidly dissipating any dust could be provided.
Mining operations require special equipment to handle the extraction and processing of ore in outer space. The machinery will need to be anchored to the body,[citation needed] but once in place, the ore can be moved about more readily due to the lack of gravity. However, no techniques for refining ore in zero gravity currently exist. Docking with an asteroid might be performed using a harpoon-like process, where a projectile would penetrate the surface to serve as an anchor; then an attached cable would be used to winch the vehicle to the surface, if the asteroid is both penetrable and rigid enough for a harpoon to be effective.
Due to the distance from Earth to an asteroid selected for mining, the round-trip time for communications will be several minutes or more, except during occasional close approaches to Earth by near-Earth asteroids. Thus any mining equipment will either need to be highly automated, or a human presence will be needed nearby. Humans would also be useful for troubleshooting problems and for maintaining the equipment. On the other hand, multi-minute communications delays have not prevented the success of robotic exploration of Mars, and automated systems would be much less expensive to build and deploy.
On April 24, 2012, a plan was announced by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources. The company was called Planetary Resources and its founders include aerospace entrepreneurs Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis. Advisers included film director and explorer James Cameron and investors included Google's chief executive Larry Page. Its executive chairman was Eric Schmidt. They planned to create a fuel depot in space by 2020 by using water from asteroids, splitting it to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft. In 2020, the company was wound down and all hardware assets were auctioned off.
Telescope technology was presented by Planetary Resources to identify and gather these asteroids has resulted in the plans for three different types of satellites:
In 2018, all plans for The Arkyd space telescope technology were abandoned, and Planetary Resources assets were acquired ConsenSys, a blockchain startup with no public space facing aspirations.
Deep Space Industries, was started in 2013 by David Gump, who had founded other space companies. At the time, the company hoped to begin prospecting for asteroids suitable for mining by 2015 and by 2016 return asteroid samples to Earth. Deep Space Industries planned to begin mining by 2023. Deep Space Industries sold water thrusters, and in 2019 was acquired by Bradford Space, a company focusing on earth orbit systems and space flight components.
At ISDC-San Diego 2013, Kepler Energy and Space Engineering (KESE, llc) also announced it was going to mine asteroids, using a simpler, more straightforward approach: KESE plans to use almost exclusively existing guidance, navigation and anchoring technologies from mostly successful missions like the Rosetta/Philae, Dawn, and Hayabusa, and current NASA Technology Transfer tooling to build and send a 4-module Automated Mining System (AMS) to a small asteroid with a simple digging tool to collect ≈40 tons of asteroid regolith and bring each of the four return modules back to low Earth orbit (LEO) by the end of the decade. Small asteroids are expected to be loose piles of rubble, therefore providing for easy extraction.
In September 2012, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) launched the Robotic Asteroid Prospector project, which will explore and evaluate the viability of asteroid mining in terms of means, methods, and systems.
Technology is being developed by TransAstra Corporation to locate and harvest asteroids with the Apis family of spacecraft, which has three classes of flying systems:
Currently, the quality of the ore and the consequent cost and mass of equipment required to extract it are unknown and can only be speculated. Some economic analyses indicate that the cost of returning asteroidal materials to Earth far outweighs their market value, and that asteroid mining will not attract private investment at current commodity prices and space transportation costs. Other studies suggest large profit by using solar power. Potential markets for materials can be identified and profit generated if extraction cost is brought down. For example, the delivery of multiple tonnes of water to low Earth orbit for rocket fuel preparation for space tourism could generate a significant profit if space tourism itself proves profitable.
In 1997 it was speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mi) contains more than US$20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals. A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km (0.62 mi) could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron–nickel ore,[citation needed] or two to three times the world production of 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of nickel–iron, which could supply the world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also be precious metals.
Not all mined materials from asteroids would be cost-effective, especially for the potential return of economic amounts of material to Earth. For potential return to Earth, platinum is considered very rare in terrestrial geologic formations and therefore is potentially worth bringing some quantity for terrestrial use. Nickel, on the other hand, is quite abundant and being mined in many terrestrial locations, so the high cost of asteroid mining may not make it economically viable.
Although Planetary Resources indicated in 2012 that the platinum from a 30-meter-long (98 ft) asteroid could be worth US$25–50 billion, an economist remarked any outside source of precious metals could lower prices sufficiently to possibly doom the venture by rapidly increasing the available supply of such metals.
Development of an infrastructure for modifying asteroid orbits could offer a huge return on investment.
Scarcity is a fundamental economic problem of humans having seemingly unlimited wants in a world of limited resources. Since Earth's resources are finite, the relative abundance of asteroidal ore gives asteroid mining the potential to provide nearly unlimited resources, which would essentially eliminate scarcity for those materials.
The idea of exhausting resources is not new. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote, because resources are ultimately limited, the exponential growth in a population would result in falls in income per capita until poverty and starvation would result as a constricting factor on population. Malthus posited this 225 years ago, and no sign has yet emerged of the Malthus effect regarding raw materials.
Continued development in asteroid mining techniques and technology will help to increase mineral discoveries. As the cost of extracting mineral resources, especially platinum group metals, on Earth rises, the cost of extracting the same resources from celestial bodies declines due to technological innovations around space exploration.
As of September 2016[update], there are 711 known asteroids having a value over US$100 trillion.
Space ventures are high-risk, with long lead times and heavy capital investment, and that is no different for asteroid-mining projects. These types of ventures could be funded through private investment or through government investment. For a commercial venture it can be profitable as long as the revenue earned is greater than total costs (costs for extraction and costs for marketing). The costs involving an asteroid-mining venture have been estimated to be around US$100 billion in 1996.
Determining financial feasibility is best represented through net present value. One requirement needed for financial feasibility is a high return on investments estimating around 30%. Example calculation assumes for simplicity that the only valuable material on asteroids is platinum. On August 16, 2016, platinum was valued at $1157 per ounce or $37,000 per kilogram. At a price of $1,340, for a 10% return on investment, 173,400 kg (5,575,000 ozt) of platinum would have to be extracted for every 1,155,000 tons of asteroid ore. For a 50% return on investment 1,703,000 kg (54,750,000 ozt) of platinum would have to be extracted for every 11,350,000 tons of asteroid ore. This analysis assumes that doubling the supply of platinum to the market (5.13 million ounces in 2014) would have no effect on the price of platinum. A more realistic assumption is that increasing the supply by this amount would reduce the price 30–50%.[citation needed]
The financial viability of asteroid mining with regards to numerous technical aspects has been given by Sonter and more recently by Hein et al.
Hein et al. have particularly analyzed the case where platinum is delivered from space to Earth and estimate that commercially feasible asteroid mining for this specific case would be fairly tough.
Decreases in the price of space access matter. The start of operational use of the low-cost-per-kilogram-in-orbit Falcon Heavy launch vehicle in 2018 is projected by astronomer Martin Elvis to have increased the extent of economically minable near-Earth asteroids from hundreds to thousands. With the increased availability of several kilometers per second of delta-v that Falcon Heavy provides, it increases the number of NEAs accessible from 3 percent to around 45 percent.
Precedent for joint investment by multiple parties into a long-term venture to mine commodities may be found in the legal concept of a mining partnership, which exists in the state laws of multiple US states including California. In a mining partnership, "[Each] member of a mining partnership shares in the profits and losses thereof in the proportion which the interest or share he or she owns in the mine bears to the whole partnership capital or whole number of shares."
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