Monetising Asteroids – NASA’s DART Mission
A $344 million spacecraft is likely to come to an Armageddon-inspired end, nearly 10 months after it departed Earth. In order to test a novel defense device, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission purposefully collided with an asteroid.
For the purpose of testing a kinetic impactor technology that might one day be employed to protect Earth from an impending asteroid, NASA is smashing the probe into the binary asteroid system Didymos.
At a speed of 24,000 kilometers per hour, the spacecraft collided with the moonlet Deimorpos of the Didymos asteroid system, slightly altering its orbit.
DART is NASA’s trial run of a planetary defense system designed to slam spacecraft into approaching asteroids to steer them away from Earth.
More frequently than you may imagine, asteroids which range in size from the size of an air conditioner to automobiles—hit our planet.
But the Monetising Asteroids – NASA’s DART Mission may possibly serve as the catalyst for much more. something that sounds as though it came from a science fiction film.
Mining of asteroids
There are a variety of metals hidden beneath the surface of asteroids, including gold, palladium, platinum, nickel, and iron. They are utilized in chemical, electric cars, and semiconductor applications.
Metals that are precious are obvious. We know from meteorites that some asteroids are fuller in platinum than any mine on Earth. Platinum sells for roughly $33.5 million per tonne. Around 200 tonnes, or billions of dollars, of platinum, are sold each year.
The asteroid belt, which is home to over a million asteroids, may have precious metals with a staggering $700 quintillion in value. There are 18 zeros after the number 7.
A less obvious source of revenue is water. The surprise is that, if sold in space, water is likewise worth millions of dollars per tonne. Water is quite useful in space. It is beneficial for breathing and for drinking since it contains oxygen.
Since water is good at absorbing radiation, it can be used to create rocket fuel by separating the hydrogen from the oxygen in H2O. This can shield people from cosmic rays, which can cause cancer.
So, in theory, water in orbit has some value. The good news is that water can make up to 10% of a water-rich asteroid.
How has the DART Mission helped though?
The DART mission enters the picture now, I suppose. We could maintain an asteroid in a steady orbit around the moon if we could move it from its current route and place it in what is known as cislunar space, which is the area between the earth and the moon.
Another option, if you want something a little more technical, is something called a Lagrange Point. It is a location in space where the gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Moon appear to cancel each other out in this situation.
So everything you drop into that location, like an asteroid, should just stay there. You could begin examining the asteroid if it stays put.
It’s definitely far more sophisticated than this at this point. Consider first smacking an asteroid while skipping the Lagrange Point. If we are even slightly off, we might cause it to collide with Earth.
Next, we have no idea which asteroids are valuable for mining. Most of them will probably be useless. Therefore, all of this is merely idle chatter until we can reliably map asteroids containing precious metals.
Finally, the cost of this could be very high. Asteroid mining may cease to be economically viable if, in the end, it is determined that the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. Hopefully, Monetising Asteroids – NASA’s DART Mission get some success eventually.
Conclusion
Becoming a trillionaire with Mining
Asteroid ownership is illegal, however, the US Space Act of 2015 permits businesses to possess the resources they extract from celestial bodies. There are incredibly wealthy and smart people who assert that mining asteroids will make them trillionaires. It seems more attainable to have a future where the metals, rock, and water we extract in space are utilized there.
I believe their main bet is on whether it occurs soon enough to make them wealthy. Experts have stated that asteroid mining will occur within our lifetimes and is certainly a way of making millions in space. It’s not too difficult when you simply begin with a billion.
