ASTEROID MINING

ASTEROID MINING

Hey fellow geeks! I know it’s been a long time since we posted an article, we have other jobs too you know but I’m here to break the tension with a dilemma that soon will emerge to be our source of mostly everything we build.

Asteroid mining is a burning topic in the science world. We most probably be extracting our basic resources from these asteroids or comets in a not so distant future.

What is asteroid mining?

Asteroid mining is the exploitation of raw materials from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-earth objects. Minerals can be mined from an asteroid or spent comets and then be utilised to build infrastructures on other celestial objects for future establishment or be brought back to earth for general utilisation.

The minerals that can be extracted include gold, platinum, iridium, osmium, rhodium, tungsten etc.

It is basically mining of asteroids.

Why asteroid mining?

“Our earth is a place where there is an abundance of naturally occurring resources”. but this was the case a long time ago, now the scenario is different. The resources are reducing day by day. Key elements for modern industry and food production could b exhausted on earth within 80-90 years. To save the earth we need to look for alternatives to obtain minerals. Here the asteroid mining comes into place.

We’ll send a rocket with attached extraction materials on the surface of the asteroid, derive the required materials from the surface as they are not in its core, and then send them back to earth or directly towards a potential destination for establishment.

Going to the asteroid would be a tough deal as the impact may disturb the elements on the surface. The journey to come home would be a lot easier as the escape velocity of these asteroids is very low.

What can we achieve?

Achievement would be both innovative and beneficial. We would be able to overcome the scarcity of minerals on our planet. Since earth’s resources are not infinite, the relative abundance minerals on asteroids gives us the benefit of procuring resources exceedingly. It would eliminate scarcity for those minerals.

From astrological point of view it would provide scientific data for research on extra-terrestrial entities because if they have already practiced asteroid mining the residue would be detectable.

Planetary resources says that , in order to be successful, we would have to build technologies that would bring the cost of space travels down. With the start of the falcon heavy tech by the spaceX the percentage of possibility increases as it has technologies that can bring down the costs heavily by landing at the initial launch site safely instead of deploying in the pacific ocean.

At the end I’d like to say that it is a section of astrophysics that can be very beneficial to the humans ,who desperately want to get rid of our planet’s resources, and give us a much wider angle on the vastness of the universe

I mean who knows what we might find.