Asteroid Mining: Are We Ready To Race For Space Riches?

Just as the population on Earth is growing, the strain on the planet's resources continues to increase each day. Although ecologists do assert that we haven't reached the extreme limit yet, we can't ignore the fact that Earth only has a finite amount of resources. It is necessary to start planning for the inevitable now and it may sound surprising but no other alternative is as promising as space resources.

Asteroid mining aims to acquire natural resources from all these extra-terrestrial objects including asteroids and other minor planetary bodies floating around in our solar system. Hollywood has already presented images of Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck as two well know asteroid miners; however, asteroid mining isn't at all science fiction. Asteroid mining is soon to become a reality, and there's a good reason for it.

According to a report published on NASA's official website, the mineral wealth that can be mined out from the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is equivalent to 100 billion dollars for each person on Earth at present. It may be a lot of wealth, but nothing's more important than the fact that this means a lot of resources.

Chris Lewicki, CEO of Planetary Resources, an asteroid mining company stated earlier, "All of the things that are available to us on this planet, we have to bring it all with us when we go to space. That obviously, is not very scalable."

NASA also stated earlier that, by the end of 21st century, space exploration will be reliant upon what we can mine in the cosmos. A number of government as well as private companies are already working on these asteroid mining projects. Luxembourg had recently taken a €220 million fund for space mining projects whereas the U.S. also signed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act into law, states Futurism.com. Private companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries also have a number of techs in helping humanity dig for the cosmos.

Asteroid Mining:

There is obviously a difference between passing laws and actually working on technology to have a functioning mining operation. Earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates described their intention to establish some policy regarding space mining and earlier on, ministers of Luxembourg announced a very large initiative that their country is starting. So, it seems that the only actual obstruction is developing the required technology.

The asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is in fact about 330 million kilometers from Earth. Fortunately, Lewicki asserts that we may not have to go that far so as to find viable asteroids for mining. "That's the great benefit of all the near-Earth asteroids. There are about 14,000 that have been discovered, and a few thousand of them are actually far easier to make the journey to."

While asteroid mining seems like an enormous leap, it is quite important to remember that advancements take place in little measured steps. The technologies for asteroid sampling are reportedly already set for testing on Earth. Planetary Resources is going to launch Ceres, which are a series of Arkyd 100 satellites that will carry out advanced imaging of Earth. The satellites will be equipped with hyper-spectral sensors that can track water content, oil and gas leaks, and even forest fires. And so, the era of space mining is already well underway, providing an alternate source of energy resources for the consumers on Earth.