Mining in Space!
By Meera Singhal
Have you ever wondered what scientists are planning to bring to space next? First, it was 3D printing, but now its Asteroid mining! Asteroid mining is not entirely for making money, instead, it's here to help save our environment! Asteroid mining is the next big thing because of the mining industry on earth, the amazing process it takes to mine asteroids, and the millions of asteroids in earth gravitational pull!
Over the past few decades, mining has become one of our richest industries, with an estimated worth of 1.7 trillion dollars! However, this industry does not come without its downsides. Mining uses toxic chemicals to uproot the metals from the ground. It must take out gasses buried deep inside the earth to get the metals in their hardest form, which is very bad for the environment. As well as that, Earth has limited resources, so once we have mine through everything, we will be left with nothing. If we continue at this rate of mining, scientists predict that within our life span we will run out of necessary metals. This means that there will be no more production of phones, computers, metal building blocks, and so much more! Thankfully, scientists turned to space, and they found the almost perfect solution. Asteroid mining! There are so many different types of asteroids, ways to latch onto their low gravity, and finally, bring them back to earth.
In earth gravitational pull, there are millions of asteroids. Most of them are either large rocks chipped away from planets or planets that could not fully form. Scientists believe that some asteroids contain almost 95 percent metals. When planets form, precious metals, and rocks, get condensed towards the inside, making it so that we can reach most. For the planets that did not fully form, the metals were not entirely condensed. As the outer layers chipped away, some of these asteroids are now 95 percent plus precious metals. Currently today, they are worth about a couple hundred billion or trillion dollars.
There are millions of asteroids in our gravitational pull, but only some of them are this expensive. For example, the asteroid Benn is worth well over 670 million dollars, and Rug is worth 82 billion dollars! Rug is worth so much more because it is filled with diamonds, gold, and all sorts of precious metals. The most expensive out of all the know asteroids, however, is valued at 700 quintillion dollars! Let us count those zeros again. That would be 1,2,3…15 zeros! This asteroid is called 16 psyche, and it is made from 95% of metals! These include nickel, iron, platinum, gold, and more!
Now, the only thing keeping you from becoming a trillionaire is figuring out how to bring all this gold back to earth. Luckily, I have the perfect solution to all your problems.
Your first problem would be landing on the asteroid. Since the asteroid has little to no gravity, that makes it incredibly hard for someone to walk/ land on an asteroid. There are two plausible solutions to this. First, you could vaporize the asteroid a little bit, form a crease, and then land in that small crease. The problem with this is that the proportions must be super accurate if you want to succeed in landing on the asteroid. Secondly, you could use thrusters to land on it. You would first have to stop the rotation (with the thrusters) and then attach yourself to the asteroid.
Once you somehow land on the asteroid, you must mine it, to really get all that mullah. Due to the low gravitational pull, the mining process is slightly different. First, gigantic mirrors extend from the space station, reflecting sunlight onto the asteroid. This heats up the asteroid and lets out all the toxic gasses. Once the asteroid is PURE rock, a grinder grinds it up and converts it to small pebbles. Meanwhile, back on earth, astronauts are preparing to launch to space to grab the samples and come back to earth, Their mission is a simple recoil mission really. This process is a lot more complicated; this was just a super simple overview of the topic. Scientists and mathematicians spend countless hours figuring out the schematics, making sure everything is perfect. If it is not, then millions of dollars would go to waste building the rocket and mining the asteroid. However, with NASA’s great team of engineers, it is possible. Check out this article below for more details! Thank you for reading!
