The American company Deep Space Industries, Inc. has announced its intention to extract minerals and water from asteroids. We know that asteroids, including the many that pass close to Earth called NEO (Near-Earth Objects), can contain a lot of water and minerals such as iron, gold, platinum, nickel and other useful both for the expansion of humanity into the solar system and for our needs on Earth.
Obviously, mining won’t start tomorrow or next year. In 2015 a number of spacecraft called Firefly are scheduled to be launched in journeys lasting several months to examine the NEO-type asteroids more closely. The Fireflies – not to be confused with the ones from the science fiction cult TV show 😉 – are small probes around 25 kg (55 lbs) each that use cheap components like the CubeSats and will be launched as a secondary cargo on rockets that send satellites for telecommunications into orbit as a primary cargo.
In 2016 the launch of the Dragonfly spacecraft, which are a little more than 30 kg (70 lbs) each are scheduled to be launched in longer and more complex missions. In fact, their purpose is to collect samples from asteroids to bring them back to Earth for further analysis. Depending on the asteroid to be reached, the mission of every Dragonfly will last between two and four years.
Deep Space Industries has applied for a patent for the MicroGravity Foundry technology, a foundry able to work in no or very low gravity in order to turn the raw materials taken from an asteroid into complex metal parts. In essence, it’s a 3D printer that uses a series of lasers to deposit the metal according to precise patterns.
Another potential market is producing propellant for satellites. Nowadays when a satellite runs out of fuel it’s doomed because it can’t adjust its position and its orbit starts decaying until its destruction when it falls into the athmosphere. An expense of millions of dollars for a resupply would be much cheaper than building and launching a new satellite. Deep Space Industries stated that it’s exploring this market along with an aerospace company.
At a later stage, the satellites could be built directly into space. Once they manage to start the production everything would be much easier because the launch from Earth has a huge cost due to the planet’s gravity. Putting a satellite into orbit launching it from an installation where gravity is minimal if not practically non-existent would be much cheaper.
The minimum gravity is also the reason why Deep Space Industries plans to reach the asteroids to extract the minerals instead of going to the Moon. The transport spaceships can use ion engines after being launched from Earth because they no longer have to fight strong gravitational fields. A spaceship that departed from the Moon should instead use a normal chemical rocket with much higher costs.
If all goes well, in the next decade the actual asteroids mining will start. At the moment it’s unclear how Deep Space Industries will have the necessary funding for the research and development of the machinery since the company is looking for sponsors and customers. Presumably it will take at least a decade before there are any profits but the company is ambitious so personally I really hope it will succed.
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