SPACE — If Earth’s resources run out, can humans mine in space? According to scientists mining asteroids, chunks of rock in outer space are not impossible.
The asteroids, boulders, ice and dust that litter the solar system are rocks that are unique from each other. There are asteroids that are bigger than skyscrapers, some are as small as cars.
However, many of them have in common that they often contain precious metals, water, and other ingredients that are essential for life as we know it on Earth.
Now, there are several companies planning to mine asteroids. One company that plans to mine asteroids is TransAstra.
Joe Sercel, CEO of TransAstra plans to mine asteroids to extract treasures and bring them back to Earth. Is it possible?
In the picture, the spacecraft will travel to medium-sized and small asteroids in the solar system. Next, this plane picks up the ‘treasure’ to be brought back to Earth, for processing.
The resulting treasure trove can contain gold and platinum, iron and palladium, and more. Some are even estimated to be worth several trillion dollars. The task of the TrabsAstra aircraft will be similar to OSIRIS-Rex, NASA’s recent mission that took asteroid samples, but on a larger scale.
“I would like to say that the only entity that can land on an asteroid and walk around the asteroid is Bruce Willis,” Sercel told The Messenger in an interview, referring to the film Armageddon in 1998.
Armageddon is a popular film that tells the story of humans’ efforts to change the orbit of an asteroid that is about to hit Earth. Although Armageddon is fiction, mining in space is closer to reality. In fact, according to many scientists, this is practically an inevitability.
Years, Not Decades
Jonathan McDowell, Harvard astronomer and astrophysicist has published several papers on the possibility of space mining. He told The Messenger that by some definitions, humanity has already begun mining asteroids.
In late September, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned rock samples it collected from the asteroid Bennu. Bennu is 50 million miles away from Earth. This is not the first asteroid mission.
Previously, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft safely stored asteroid samples on Earth in 2020. These two missions could be called mining expeditions.
But in both cases, the spacecraft only took a few ounces of asteroid samples. The amount extracted is just a fraction of what active mines on Earth produce in an hour.
This amount is far from what an asteroid mining mission would need to collect in order to make a profit. But McDowell believes that larger-scale operations are likely in the next few decades.
2023-11-19 23:48:00
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