Asteroid Mining and Space Resources news and discussions

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wjfox
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Asteroid Mining and Space Resources news and discussions

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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


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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/
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Re: Asteroid Mining and Space Resources news and discussions

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wjfox wrote: Thu May 04, 2023 8:01 am
:D space mining or just being in space would be pretty cool no? Even a moon base would be a cool thing to do.
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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


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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.
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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/


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