Technological importance of asteroid mining

Abstract

With the ever-growing demands of the population and the ever-growing world of consumption and technology, the resources of the planet Earth are limited. According to Cohen (2007), some of the Earth's major resources, such as metals and minerals needed to develop the technology and food industries, may be depleted within the next 40-50 years, based on known terrestrial reserves and increased consumption. For industrial and technological development of humanity, new discoveries are needed in future realization as well as future discoveries. Asteroids are celestial bodies of scientific importance to reveal the formation, chemical composition and evolution of the Solar System. As the name implies, "Near Earth Asteroids", metal have been found to be potentially close to possible because they are sufficiently close and can be found in precious metals and minerals. The reservoirs of important substances such as water, metals and semiconductors can be found in these celestial bodies. Although the Asteroids and the Earth are composed of the same elements, the Earth's relatively stronger gravity has attracted all the heavy elements to its core over time. An asteroid rain deprived of such valuable elements results in the formation of gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, radium, ruthenium and tungsten elements (from the core to the surface). Today, these metals are extracted from the Earth's crust and are required for economic and technological advancements. Therefore, the geological history of the Earth can be a very good step for the future of asteroid mining.

Keywords

• asteroid mining
• asteroid categories
• REEs
• technology
• metals
• C-type
• S-type
• M-type
• PGMs
• NEAs
• valuable asteroids

References

1. Badescu V. 2013. Asteroids: prospective energy and material resources, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
2. Binzel RP, Farinella P, Zappala V, Cellino A. 1989. Asteroid rotation rates-distributions and statistics. IN: Asteroids II; Proceedings of the Conference, Tucson, AZ, Mar. 8-11, 1988 (A90-27001 10-91). Tucson, AZ, University of Arizona Press, 1989, p. 416-441.
3. Blutstein K, Przylibski TA, £uszczek K. 2018. Zawartość minerałów FeNi w chondrytach H jako wskaźnik zasobności pozaziemskich skał rudonośnych w wybrane metale Concentration of FeNi minerals in H chondrites as an indicator of extraterrestrial ore-bearing rocks wealth in selected metals Przeglad Geologiczny, 66(12):776-784.
4. Brenan JM, McDonough WF. 2009. Core formation and metal–silicate fractionation of osmium and iridium from gold. Nature Geoscience, vol 658:798–801.
5. Brownlee D, Tsou P, Aléon J, Alexander CM O'D, Araki T, Bajt S, Baratta GA, Bastien R, Bland P, Bleuet P. 2006. Comet 81P/Wild 2 Under a Microscope. Science 314(5806):1711-6.
6. Bus SJ, Binzel RP. 2002. Phase II of the small main-belt asteroid spectroscopic survey. A Feature-Based Taxonomy. Icarus 158(1):106-145.
7. Calla P, Fries D, Welch C. 2018. Asteroid mining with small spacecraft and its economic feasibility. Acta Astronautica, eprint arXiv:1808.05099.
8. Cohen M. 2007. Networks of absolute calibration stars for SST, AKARI, and WISE. The Future of Photometric, Spectrophotometric and Polarimetric Standardization, ASP Conference Series, vol.364:333-353.

9. Haxel GB, Hedrick JB, Orris GJ. 2002. Rare earth elements—critical resources for high technology. U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 087-02.
10. Hellgren V. 2016. Asteroid mining: A review of methods and aspects. B.S. thesis, Lund University.
11. Lauretta DS, Barucci MA, Bierhaus EB, Brucato JR, Campins H, Christensen PR, Clark BC, Connolly HC, Dotto E, Dworkin JP. Emery J, Garvin JB, Hildebrand AR, Libourel G, Marshall JR, Michel P, Nolan MC, Nuth JA, Rizk B, Sandford SA, Scheeres DJ, Vellinga JM. 2012. The OSIRIS-REx mission — sample acquisition strategy and evidence for the nature of regolith on asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36. Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 2012, Proceedings of the conference held May 16-20, 2012 in Niigata, Japan. LPI Contribution No. 1667, id.6291.
12. Norton OR. 2002. The Cambridge encyclopedia of meteorites. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 374. ISBN 0521621437.
13. O'Leary B. 1977. Mining the Apollo and Amor asteroids. Science 197, no. 4301 (1977): 363-66.
14. Rubin AE, Grossman JN. 2010. Meteorite and meteoroid: New comprehensive definitions. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 45: 114-122.
15. Tholen DJ. 1984. Asteroid Taxonomy From Cluster Analysis Of Photometry. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1984, 166 pp.
16. Welch C, Yi S, Lasslop A. 2010. Asteroid mining technologies roadmap and applications (ASTRA). International Space University Space Studies Program 2010 Graffenstaden-France.