Harboring both the solar system’s ancient past and its bountiful resources, asteroids are perhaps the best-suited targets of opportunity for resource extraction and a source of usable propellants for the build-out of a near-Earth space economy. The use of meteorites as analogs for the abundances the asteroids contain makes a strong case for the potential rewards that deep space exploration and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) can provide. Until more rendezvous and sampling missions are flown and ground truth can be acquired, prospectors rely on remote sensing and meteorites for knowledge related to asteroid properties and potential reserves. The wide variety of asteroids and their theoretical representation in meteorites indicates a diverse set of potentially utilizable resources and consumables like water, sulfur, metal-rich minerals and alloys. Linkages between the meteorite catalogues and their parent bodies are few and far between, but the sample return of potentially hydrated C-complex asteroid material by Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx could reduce the investor hesitancy that peaked at the end of the 2010s and curtailed commercial mining of asteroids. The framework required to lower mission cost and risk using asteroid resources as fuels and raw materials has become clearer in the past decade, but roadblocks and economic headwinds have led to fluctuations in the pace of progress towards mining asteroids. NASA is currently growing its technology development and maturation programs for the Moon, which could serve as a useful model for asteroid ISRU going forward. NASA will likely need to once again be a leader and trailblazer in this area so that smaller companies do not have to bear the financial burden of a capability build-out that could cost $10 s‒100 s of millions. The synergy between government and private interests continues to increase, benefitting future commercial players by lowering launch costs and providing new vehicles for the support spacecraft demonstration missions. There are many considerations to be discussed as the people of this planet look to expand into deep space.


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    Title :

    Asteroids: Small Bodies, Big Potential


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Handbook of Space Resources ; Chapter : 24 ; 803-840


    Publication date :

    2023-04-28


    Size :

    38 pages




    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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