Robot miners will not just have to land safely on the often oddly-shaped asteroids, but also manoeuvre across their surface. Equipped with high-def imaging plus neutron and gamma ray detectors, Psyche will arrive in early 2026 and give the first-ever glimpse of what might be on offer to space miners.Īccording to some guesstimates, as much as one part per thousand of the asteroid’s mass may be precious metals including gold (a figure which lies behind that $700 billion billion guesstimate of the fortunes to be made).Īctually digging the stuff out is a far bigger challenge, however. This will target the eponymous asteroid which studies suggest is made almost entirely out of metals. Nasa will lead the way in August 2022, with the launch of the Psyche mission. Simply finding suitable asteroids will require fleets of prospector satellites to confirm the viability of each site. While conjuring up images of robot diggers and rockets laden with gold zooming back to Earth, the reality is far more demanding. The following year Deep Space Industries entered the fray, backed by investors and some US government contracts. AP PhotoĪccording to Planetary Resources, an early US-based entrant in the space mining business, a single half-kilometre wide platinum-rich asteroid can contain more of this class of precious metals than has ever been mined on Earth.įormed in 2012, Planetary Resources raised $50 million from investors by 2016, among them movie director James Cameron. Planetary Resources aims to mine asteroids for resources ranging from water to precious metals as shown in this computer-generated image. As a bonus, the weak gravity of asteroids means the heavy metals haven’t sunk deep below the surface. Some asteroids appear to be rich in metals like iron and nickel, and may contain precious metals in concentrations 10 to 20 times higher than in Earth-bound mines. By bouncing radio waves off them and analysing their light, astronomers have been able to probe their chemical make-up. Once dismissed by astronomers as “vermin of the skies", asteroids are now known to be remnants from the birth of the solar system. As reported in The National, the UAE will soon join the US and Luxembourg in having legislation allowing would-be prospectors to keep whatever they find.Ĭertainly there is good reason for thinking the gold and other riches really are out there.
Now governments are taking space mining seriously.
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