Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Mining asteroids is said to be able to provide abundant benefits for those who do it. The National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) said asteroids could be a valuable resource for human civilization because they store a number of minerals for everyday life.
Researcher at the LAPAN Center for Science and Space, Andi Princeg, said this happened amid increasing demand for metallic materials. Meanwhile, mining on Earth has not been sufficient to sustain human civilization.
“In the midst of decreasing mineral resources on Earth due to massive exploitation, the extraction of valuable elements from an asteroid which is then brought to Earth for profit is a pretty interesting idea, despite some of the difficulties that occur among them,” said Andi quoted from the statement. Lapan Science Education page, Thursday (5/8/2021).
He said the difficulty could be the expensive cost of flying into space. In addition, the identification of asteroids that cannot be relied upon when mined and also the extraction of metal ores can be a challenge.
“That’s why until now, mining on Earth is still the only way to obtain mineral raw materials,” he said.
Andi said there were a number of missions to bring back asteroid samples to Earth. For example, the Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2 missions by the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA and NASA with OSIRIS-REx are still ongoing to sample asteroid 101955 Bennu, which is planned to weigh 60 grams.
There are three general types of asteroids, namely Type C (carbon), Type S (silicate minerals), and Type M (moderate). In type C, asteroids contain water in abundance and mission costs can be reduced by using water on the object. In addition, there is also organic carbon, phosphorus and other main ingredients for fertilizer on this asteroid.
While Type S contains less water but contains more metals including nickel, cobalt, and more valuable metals (gold, platinum and rhodium). Andi wrote that the S-type asteroid measuring 10 meters contains 650 tons of metal with 50 kg of which are rare forms such as platinum and gold.
Type M contains up to 10 times more metal than Type S. However, this asteroid is rare.
“Near -Earth asteroids with the Easily Recoverable Object (ERO) subclass are considered possible candidates for early mining activity,” Andi said.
Andi also provides four options for mining asteroids, namely:
- In-Space manufacturing ISM, can be activated by Bioing or biological mining.
- Bringing raw asteroid material to Earth for use.
- Processing it on the spot and then bringing back the processed material. Propellants can also be produced on the way home.
- Transporting asteroids into safe orbits around the Moon or Earth as well as to the International Space Station (ISS). Hypothetically, this allows most of the material used and others to be wasted.
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