Scientists believe that the answer to Earth’s insatiable demand for minerals could be found elsewhere: on metal-rich asteroids.
Private space exploration companies and national agencies are committing significant resources to exploring these M-type asteroids, named after the valuable metals they are speculated to contain – although no spacecraft has landed on one yet.
Until now the lucrative prospect has remained a “largely hypothetical project, if not quite something from the realms of science fiction”, thanks to its “exorbitant cost”, said Verdict. But with mineral deposits becoming rapidly depleted on Earth, “scientists urgently need to identify new methods of obtaining critical resources”.
Private US-based mining company AstroForge plans to launch a spacecraft named Odin in the first quarter of 2024, for a year-long fly-by journey to an undisclosed asteroid. But the potential new space rush raises concerns about cosmic property rights and the economic impact of flooding the market with extraterrestrial supplies.
What is asteroid mining?
The main difference between earthbound mining and mining an asteroid is “the need for equipment that can withstand low-gravity, high-radiation conditions” and “function autonomously”, said Live Science.
Mining on Earth raises a wealth of ethical concerns, from ecological impact to the exploitation of labour, which asteroid mining could bypass.
But before it can begin, humans need to understand more about the mineral-rich asteroids as well as how to work on them. AstroForge has made efforts in both regards, said The New York Times. Last April it launched Brokkr–1, a “microwave–size machine” the purpose of which was to “practise refining metals in the environment of space”. But the mission quickly ran into problems and the company was in a “race against time” to resolve them as of last December.
Odin’s goal, meanwhile, will be to reach an undisclosed asteroid and “conduct a flyby, capturing data and 20-megapixel images as it seeks to confirm metallic riches”, said Payload.
If the spacecraft finds platinum-group metals – six elements (including platinum) used widely in electronic, automotive and health technology production – AstroForge would build a craft capable of bringing 1,000-2,000kg of the metals back to Earth per mission. That could return $70-140 million (£55-111 million) in “cosmic bounty”.
How lucrative could it be?
The asteroid mining industry would be incredibly profitable. Asterank, a database that estimates the value and cost of mining over 600,000 asteroids, paints an optimistic picture.
While the software engineer behind the project admits that the information Asterank operates on is not perfect, nearly all of the top 1,000 most cost-effective asteroids in the database would each yield pure profits in the tens of millions to hundreds of trillions of pounds. They wouldn’t necessarily need to boast platinum-group metals either: just the nickel and iron that M–type asteroids are thought to contain are valuable enough on their own.
The problem, however, is the upfront cost of developing the technology. The companies Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries both claimed in 2016 that they would be landing on or mining asteroids in the mid–2020s, but both organisations folded and “quietly disappeared after being acquired by other companies” just a few years later, said Wired.
Nevertheless, the allure of 15–figure paydays has driven both public and private investment in what was once considered science fiction.
How close is it to happening?
Last October, Nasa launched a mission to an M-type asteroid named Psyche, estimated by Asterank to contain metals worth up to $27.67 billion (£21.8 billion) and likely to be a strong candidate for mining.
While Nasa’s mission is purely scientific in its aims, anything the craft finds when it lands on Psyche in five years’ time will likely accelerate interest in mining at a rate as yet unseen. Philip Metzger, a planetary physicist at the University of Central Florida, told Live Science that if “money poured in now, we might see small–scale asteroid mining in five years”.