Asteroid Mining and Space Resources news and discussions

[wjfox]

Credit: Erin Mahoney/NASA


Note: this thread is distinct from Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors, the latter being more of a general and science-y thread.

Here, we can discuss developments relevant to mining and resource extraction, specifically. Not just on asteroids but also the Moon, other moons of the Solar System, and perhaps even beyond our Solar System in the more distant future.

You may remember some years back, Peter Diamandis co-founded Planetary Resources. A few years later, Deep Space Industries also emerged. Both of these showed real promise, but unfortunately lacked a viable business model, ending their operations in the late 2010s. But other companies continue to pursue the dream of untold riches in space, and given the finite resources here on Earth, it seems inevitable that (barring a collapse of civilisation), asteroid mining will be part of our future.

Ultimately, these large rocks may even become habitable...

http://www.orbitbooks.net/2312/

https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2019/02/15.htm

[caltrek]

Astroforge Raises $13 Million Seed Round for Asteroid Mining Ambitions
by Aria Alamalhodaei
May 26, 2022

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Although we’ve long understood that asteroids are not simply the rubble of the universe, but potentially profitable stores of precious minerals, humanity has never been able to unlock this value. Y Combinator startup Astroforge wants to succeed where other companies have failed, by becoming the first to mine an asteroid and bring the material back to Earth — and it’s aiming to do so as early as the end of the decade.

To kickstart its operations, the startup has closed a $13 million seed round, financing which co-founder Matt Gialich says will fund Astroforge through its first two missions, including an initial demonstration flight that’s scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission next year. The seed round was led by Initialized Capital, with investments from Seven Seven Six, EarthRise, Aera VC, Liquid 2 and Soma.

Astroforge’s two co-founders, Gialich and Jose Acain, say they have developed an innovative technique to refine materials in-space — but for now, they’re staying mostly mum on what it involves, and how it solves the myriad technical challenges for which asteroid mining is so notorious. They were able to share that the technology requires a high-rated vacuum and to be in zero-G to work.

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/26/astro ... ambitions/

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

space mining or just being in space would be pretty cool no? Even a moon base would be a cool thing to do.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy

By Leonard David
published 1 day ago

The pace is quickening for using Earth's moon as a near-term, go-to location to land on, live and explore.

As NASA's Artemis Program moves forward, so too do long-term plans by small and large firms, academia, along with international space agencies.

That was in evidence at the twenty-third meeting of the Space Resources Roundtable, held here last month at the Colorado School of Mines. A record attendance of some 250 participants spoke on lunar economic models, results of in-the-lab tests, and legal and policy issues. A number of entrepreneurial groups shared their strategies to turn the moon into a hustle and bustle world of marketable services.

The key glue that anchors future moon use is labeled in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU. ISRU involves the extraction of oxygen, water and other available materials for cranking out rocket fuel and to "gas up" life-support systems. Then there's pulling out metals on the moon, say to fabricate lunar housing, landing pads, along with other structures and products.

"For years it has all seemed like pie in the sky … do this, or do that. This is now becoming so real," said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

https://www.space.com/moon-mining-gains-momentum

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Two groups look at the economic viability of mining asteroids
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-groups-ec ... roids.html

Two teams of economists have conducted economic assessments of mining asteroids—one of them is a trio with one member each from the University of Tor Rome Vergata, the University of Maryland and Middlebury College. They looked at asteroid mining as part of the next logical step in monetizing space exploration.

The second group, with three members from the Colorado School of Mines and a fourth with the International Monetary Fund, focused more on the challenges that would have to be surmounted for industry to capitalize on assets that are currently free for the taking on asteroids. Both groups have published papers describing their efforts in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prior research has shown that there are valuable materials on asteroids. This includes diamonds and perhaps other gems, but the truly valuable materials are more likely to be metals that are highly valued but in short supply here on Earth, such as cobalt, nickel and platinum. Such metals have seen a rise in value in recent years as they have been used in a host of modern technology products such as batteries, solar panels and windmill parts.

Such metals tend to come from a few countries, which puts their supply at risk, adding to costs. To overcome such challenges, some companies are turning their sights to the oceans—the seafloor has been found to harbor huge amounts of valuable metals. But harvesting them involves disturbing ecosystems, polluting the sea and incurring costs associated with deep-sea operations.

[wjfox]

Astroforge Closer to Asteroid Mining with Successful Propulsion Test

October 25, 2023

Space mining startup AstroForge just got a little bit closer to achieving their goal of mining asteroids for precious metals, after announcing in a press release shared with SpaceRef on Wednesday, October 18 that they’ve successfully tested the flight propulsion system of their Brokkr-2 surveyor spacecraft.

This follows up on their recent launch of their Brokkr-1 CubeSat, which will test technology designed to refine ore in space.

https://spaceref.com/newspace-and-tech/ ... sion-test/



Credit: AstroForge

[wjfox]

Space mining startup AstroForge aims to launch historic asteroid-landing mission in 2025

August 21, 2024

Asteroid-mining startup AstroForge plans to make history next year.

The California company announced Tuesday (Aug. 20) that it aims to launch its third mission in 2025, as a ridealong on Houston company Intuitive Machines' IM-3 moon mission. That launch will send AstroForge's 440-pound (200 kilograms) Vestri probe to dock with a metallic near-Earth asteroid — an unprecedented leap for a commercial spacecraft.

"If successful, this mission will be the first private mission to land on another body outside of our Earth-moon system and will move us closer to realizing our mission of making off-world resources accessible to all humankind," AstroForge wrote in an update Tuesday.

That same update revealed that AstroForge has raised $40 million more from investors, bringing its total funding haul to date to $55 million.

AstroForge was founded in January 2022 and came out of stealth mode four months later. The company plans to extract resources from asteroids, "to unlock a cost-effective and sustainable mining solution that replenishes resources and safeguards our planet's future," as it wrote in Tuesday's update.

https://www.space.com/asteroid-mining-a ... ssion-2025

[weatheriscool]

Honestly, the next thing Elon should do instead of fucking with disable peoples income is to open up a space mining company! Such a company could work with space x to mine the moon, mars, asteroids and outer moons for resources. This would be one of the biggest reasons for moving outwards into space. Otherwise it is very short term and without drive. Such mining towns and outpost could be modeled after the old west mining towns and it is very effective way economically of doing things.

IF he was serous of course...

[Powers]

Honestly, the next thing Elon should do instead of fucking with disable peoples income is to open up a space mining company! Such a company could work with space x to mine the moon, mars, asteroids and outer moons for resources. This would be one of the biggest reasons for moving outwards into space. Otherwise it is very short term and without drive. Such mining towns and outpost could be modeled after the old west mining towns and it is very effective way economically of doing things.

IF he was serous of course...

Is it even profitable with current technology?

[weatheriscool]

Honestly, the next thing Elon should do instead of fucking with disable peoples income is to open up a space mining company! Such a company could work with space x to mine the moon, mars, asteroids and outer moons for resources. This would be one of the biggest reasons for moving outwards into space. Otherwise it is very short term and without drive. Such mining towns and outpost could be modeled after the old west mining towns and it is very effective way economically of doing things.

IF he was serous of course...

Is it even profitable with current technology?

If elon continues to drive down the cost of launch vehicles and then can scale transport vehicles + landing vehicles I don't see how he coudn't. He is best able to pull it off. If he is serious about taking humanity off planet then there needs to be an economic driver.

[firestar464]

Honestly, the next thing Elon should do instead of fucking with disable peoples income is to open up a space mining company! Such a company could work with space x to mine the moon, mars, asteroids and outer moons for resources. This would be one of the biggest reasons for moving outwards into space. Otherwise it is very short term and without drive. Such mining towns and outpost could be modeled after the old west mining towns and it is very effective way economically of doing things.

IF he was serous of course...

Is it even profitable with current technology?

I mean there's also the cost of putting up asteroid colonies and making sure nothing bad happens. That will also be expensive.

[weatheriscool]

Honestly, the next thing Elon should do instead of fucking with disable peoples income is to open up a space mining company! Such a company could work with space x to mine the moon, mars, asteroids and outer moons for resources. This would be one of the biggest reasons for moving outwards into space. Otherwise it is very short term and without drive. Such mining towns and outpost could be modeled after the old west mining towns and it is very effective way economically of doing things.

IF he was serous of course...

Is it even profitable with current technology?

I mean there's also the cost of putting up asteroid colonies and making sure nothing bad happens. That will also be expensive.

Elon wants colonies off earth and he has done impressive stuff. So it is up to him. So far I don't doubt it is within his ability.

[Powers]

Is it even profitable with current technology?

I mean there's also the cost of putting up asteroid colonies and making sure nothing bad happens. That will also be expensive.

Elon wants colonies off earth and he has done impressive stuff. So it is up to him. So far I don't doubt it is within his ability.

He or is succesor, granted he keeps having success.

[wjfox]

How a start-up plans to mine the Moon for a rare form of helium

17 March 2025

A space start-up will launch a Moon mining mission in 2027, with the eventual goal of delivering a rare form of helium that is essential for some quantum computers and future nuclear fusion reactors. If successful, it will be the first commercial mission of its kind.

[...]

The US company Interlune hopes to prove it can extract this gas from the lunar regolith with its Prospect Moon mission, planned for 2027. It revealed the mission details for the first time at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas on 11 March. “We aim to be the first company to commercialise resources from space,” said Elizabeth Frank at Interlune during the presentation.

“It’s potentially feasible,” says Clive Neal at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who also acted as an unpaid scientific adviser for Interlune. “But what we don’t know is what the true solar wind content of that lunar [soil] is.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/24 ... of-helium/



Credit: Interlune

[weatheriscool]

Plan to harvest helium-3 from lunar surface reaches prototyping milestone
By Paul Ridden
May 27, 2025

A US startup is looking to our closest satellite to fill a resources gap here on Earth. Helium-3 is rare on terra firma, but is thought to be abundant in the regolith of the Moon. Interlune has now revealed a full-scale excavator prototype that forms a key component of its lunar Harvester.

The shortage of helium-3 – a stable isotope of helium important for applications ranging from energy production to medical research – was first identified in the US toward the middle of 2008. The US government officially recognized the issue in early 2009, and mitigation efforts put in place.

"The United States supply of 3He comes from the decay of tritium (3H), which the Nation had in large quantities because of our nuclear weapons complex; however, the tritium stockpile has declined in recent years through radioactive decay and is expected to decline in the future because of reduced demand for tritium," read the intro to a National Isotope Development Center newsletter from 2014.

https://newatlas.com/space/interlune-ve ... -protoype/

[weatheriscool]

If Elon musk was serious about the debt and spreading humanity into space he'd learn from history and start a mining company...That is the core of what he should focus on on mars and outwards. There needs to be a solid economic reason for humans going to other planets and this would benefit humanity.