Mining the asteroid belt for resources – chiefly metals – has long been a staple of science fiction. Both Larry Niven’s “Known Space” novels and James S. A. Corey’s “Expanse” novels and tv series feature a distinct human sub-culture of “Belters” who live and mine the remote rocks of the Solar System.
We’re a long, long way away from such a science fiction scenario, but one of a pair of new space missions might be seen as the first steps. While one of the missions is a purely scientific one, the second is akin to “space prospecting”.
The NASA space agency is to launch two new unmanned missions to explore asteroids – one of them made of metal.
Scientists hope Lucy and Psyche, which will go ahead in 2021 and 2023 respectively, will help reveal the origins of the universe.
This is especially true of the Lucy mission. Many asteroids are thought to be the leftover rubble from the formation of the Solar System: some, like Lucy, may well be “planetismals”, the foundations of embryonic planets which never evolved further, due to bombardment from other objects or because the massive gravity of primitive Jupiter disrupted their evolution.
The first mission will study the Trojan asteroids which follow the orbit of Jupiter[…]
“This is a unique opportunity,” said Harold F. Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission.
“Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system.”
But it is the second mission which holds tantalising possibilities for future commercial endeavours.
The Psyche mission will explore a giant metal asteroid – 16 Psyche – which is about three times as far away from the sun than as the Earth is.
Most asteroids are rock or ice but this one is thought to be mostly iron and nickel, like the Earth’s core.
NASA said scientists are considering the possibility that Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet as large as Mars, which shed its rocky outer layers due to violent collisions billions of years ago.
“This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world – not one of rock or ice, but of metal,” said Psyche principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton.
“16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core.
Sky News
It must be stressed that this is hardly the dawning of an imminent commercial asteroid-mining industry. Indeed, while Lucy will launch next year and reach its first destination in 2025, Psyche isn’t due to launch for another three years, and reach its destination in 2030. Aside from that, there are the logistics to consider: at the moment, mining in space is too prohibitively expensive.
But that’s mainly due to the difficulty – and therefore expense – of getting up and down from Earth’s surface. Should significant Earth-orbit platforms expand in the near future – think the ISS, only private enterprise – with space-based refining and manufacturing capability, then asteroid mining may well be the cheaper option. It would cost next-to-nothing to launch “carts” full of asteroid ore and send them coasting back to Earth-orbit (and vice-versa), compared to launching materials refined and built on Earth.
So this may turn out to be the first toe-hold of a distant asteroid-mining industry. But, if 2030 seems a long way off, I can remember when the Voyager probes were launched, and their target dates in the 1980s seemed forever away.
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