Asteroid mining is a process under which asteroids and other celestial bodies are mined for extracting crucial resources to boost humanity’s space faring capacities and resource necessities on earth.
Potential of Asteroid mining-
1. Asteroid mining shows promise as a method for obtaining critical elements. The asteroid belt in our solar system contains ~8% metal-rich (M type) asteroids and 75% volatile-rich carbonaceous (C type) asteroids.
2. The denser metals in asteroids, including platinum group metals are distributed relatively evenly throughout the asteroid body, simplifying the mining process as drilling can be relatively shallow.
3. An asteroid-mining infrastructure could help to solve a major impending resource problem.
4. asteroid mining is capable of producing significant amounts of critical elements and also enables us to understand the nature of asteroid perfectly.
Challenges--
1.Include categorization and identification of mineable deposits, building the infrastructure to mine and refine asteroid material, and creating the ability to move mined material onto earth.
2.Asteroid companies compete with terrestrial mining companies, with lesser infrastructural benefit from a mature, low-cost terrestrial supply chain and transportation network.
3. Asteroid mining is a technology in its earliest stages with massive start-up costs.
4. Getting prospective corporations and companies to buy asteroid water may be easier said than done. A business model will need to be formulated.
5. Developing technology to extract resources from asteroids for commercial & scientific purposes may require considerable initial capital investment from government and private agencies worldwide. Considerable human personnel too would need to be selected, trained and sent on missions that involve a considerable risk to life
6. The possibility of human personnel being infected with an invasive alien species while on extraction missions can be disastrous for the mission as a whole. Security details coupled with extensive decontamination checks would need to be periodically scheduled to prevent a possible outbreak.
