Mining an asteroid probably won’t look exactly like mining does on Earth, but some principles will stay the same.
The cars, cellphones, computers and televisions that people in the U.S. use every day require metals like copper, cobalt and platinum to build. Demand from the electronics industry for these metals is only rising, and companies are constantly searching for new places on Earth to mine them.
Scientists estimate that lots of these metals exist thousands of miles beneath Earth’s surface, in its molten core, but that’s farThe commercialization of asteroid mining is still a ways off, but in October 2023, NASA launched a scientific mission to explore theis studying the composition and structure of this asteroid, which could tell scientists more about Earth’s core since the two objects might have a similar makeup.
With the spacecraft estimated to arrive at the asteroid’s orbit in 2029, the findings from the Psyche mission will provide unique insights into the type of metals present on the asteroid’s surface, as well as their amount, and the minerals containing these metals. This data is essential both for scientists like me exploring the formation and evolution planetary bodies, as well as for companies investigating the possibility of asteroid mining..
Similarly, before mining an asteroid, companies will have to think about all those factors, and they’ll have to come up with the infrastructure needed to mine at a distance and transport the metals they mine hundreds of millions of miles back to Earth. The technology to do that is still years away, and transporting metals would require major funding.
The Psyche mission is a huge step in figuring out what sort of metals are out there, and it may also answer questions about the composition and properties of Earth’s core.The Sciences
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