Asteroid mining (CAJ)

Hello and welcome to my first CAJ post!

I decided to write about a relatively unknown project – asteroid mining. I am 99% sure that most people do not know what this project is about and what the aim of it is. Luckily the uncertainty is over and over the next few weeks and months you will learn all important facts, at least what I consider important J, about asteroid mining.
Let’s begin.

•   Who is interested in asteroid mining?
•  The company Planetary Resources was founded in 2010 by Eric Anderson. Its mission is “to expand Earth’s natural resource base by exploring the space and developing technologies for asteroid mining”.
• Anderson is convinced that space mining could be the start of a completely new industry sector.

• Which elements do they think asteroids contain?

o   Scientists have already successfully discovered NEAs, Near-Earth Asteroids, which contain one or more of these elements: iron, nickel, magnesium, water, metal, oxygen, gold, platinum.

• Why do they want to mine for these elements in the universe? All of them can be found on earth.
•  Some of these elements are very expensive on Earth and/or are getting less. Platinum, for example, is very rare on Earth. On an Asteroid with about 30 meters diameter there could be platinum worth to 50 billion US dollars. If it became possible to mine for water in the universe, asteroids could be used as a kind of gas stations. Hydrogen and oxygen could be used for spaceship fuel and would reduce the price drastically because fuel would not have to be transported from the Earth to the universe.

• That sounds really interesting but what are asteroids anyway?
• Asteroids are leftover materials from the early solar system. They are classified into three different categories:
• C-type: More than 75% of all known asteroids are considered to be a C-type. Their structure is similar to that of the sun but do not contain hydrogen and helium.
• S-type: These asteroids contain nickel, iron and magnesium.
• M-type: Only a small number of asteroids fit into this category. Nickel and iron can be found on them.

• Where can I get more information about this topic?
•  In my next post J
• Also, this is a great video to start with:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9cLLNpo2f8

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