* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Asteroid mining

Blobrana · L

Luxembourg to support space mining

The Luxembourg government has signalled its intention to get behind the mining of asteroids in space.
It is going to support R&D in technologies that would make it possible and may even invest directly in some companies.
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Blobrana · L

Title: Asteroids in the service of humanity
Authors: Ian A. Crawford

There are at least three compelling reasons for the human race to initiate a major programme to explore and better understand the 'minor planets' of the Solar System: (1) Enhancing scientific knowledge; (2) Mitigating the impact hazard; and (3) Utilizing extraterrestrial resources. Strong synergies exist between all three. Moreover, all these activities would benefit from greater international cooperation in space exploration by the World's space agencies, and the recognition that asteroids are important targets for human and robotic exploration.

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New Study Says Asteroid Retrieval and Mining Feasible With Existing and Near-Term Technologies

A new study sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) has concluded that it would be possible to return an asteroid weighing approximately 500 metric tons to high lunar orbit where it would be mined for resources by 2025.
The Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, published on April 2, was prepared for KISS, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Co-leaders of the study included John Brophy of NASA JPL/Caltech, Fred Culick of Caltech, and Louis Friedman of The Planetary Society and participants included representatives of other NASA centres, various universities, institutes and private companies.
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Ed ~ 500 metric tons is only a ~7 metre-wide asteroid...a relatively safe size. The future dangers would be from capturing larger asteroids and the militarisation of that technology.

Blobrana · L

Title: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study
Authors: John Brophy, Fred Culick, Louis Friedman, Carlton Allen, David Baughman, Julie Bellerose, Bruce Betts, Mike Brown, Michael Busch, John Casani, Marcello Coradini, John Dankanich, Paul Dimotakis, Martin Elvis, Ian Garrick-Bethel, Bob Gershman, Tom Jones, Damon Landau, Chris Lewicki, John Lewis, Pedro Llanos, Mark Lupisella, Dan Mazanek, Prakhar Mehrotra, Joe Nuth, Kevin Parkin, Rusty Schweickart, Guru Singh, Nathan Strange, Marco Tantardini, Brian Wilcox, Colin Williams, Willie Williams, Don Yeomans,

This report describes the results of a study sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) to investigate the feasibility of identifying, robotically capturing, and returning an entire Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) to the vicinity of the Earth by the middle of the next decade. The KISS study was performed by people from Ames Research Centre, Glenn Research Centre, Goddard Space Flight Centre, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Centre, Langley Research Centre, the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard University, the Naval Postgraduate School, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Southern California, Arkyd Astronautics, Inc., The Planetary Society, the B612 Foundation, and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. The feasibility of an asteroid retrieval mission hinges on finding an overlap between the smallest NEAs that could be reasonably discovered and characterised and the largest NEAs that could be captured and transported in a reasonable flight time. This overlap appears to be centred on NEAs roughly 7 m in diameter corresponding to masses in the range of 250,000 kg to 1,000,000 kg. To put this in perspective, the Apollo program returned 382 kg of Moon rocks in six missions and the OSIRIS-REx mission proposes to return at least 60 grams of surface material from a NEA by 2023. The present study indicates that it would be possible to return a ~500,000-kg NEA to high lunar orbit by around 2025.

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Blobrana · L

On Tuesday, a new company called Planetary Resources will announce its existence at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. It's not clear what the firm does, but its roster of backers incudes Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, filmmaker James Cameron, former Microsoftie (and space philanthropist) Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr., son of the former presidential candidate.
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Ed ~ Planetary Resources could be an underwater mining operation - at first...

Blobrana · L

Advances in autonomous robots seen as key to unlocking asteroid mining

The mineral value of near-earth asteroids is prompting some companies to begin paying attention to these potentially lucrative targets.
Technically, the second joint meeting between the Planetary and Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium VI and the Space Resources Roundtable XI concluded that in situ space resource utilisation (ISRU) required advances in autonomous robots.
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Blobrana · L

Planetary scientist, John Lewis, estimated that if all of the total platinum wealth in the asteroid belt were divided amongst every person on Earth, each-- individual's-- share would come out to be over $30 billion. Furthermore, he estimated that if the total value of resources of the asteroids: iron, nickel, aluminium, titanium, gold, silver, uranium, etc. were divided amongst every individual on Earth then each individual's share would come out to be over $100 billion. So its clear that while we may live on a planet of limited industrial material resources, we also live in a solar system of virtually unlimited industrial material resources.

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