Almost a year ago, the space science community watched as an asteroid entered Earth’s orbit and circled above our heads for almost two months before departing. Scientists usually track such asteroids because of the risk they pose for life on Earth. But although they can pose a threat to our planet, asteroids are also potentially worth many billions of dollars because of the precious metals they contain. This is why space entrepreneurs and scientists are gearing up for the next asteroid visit, with the aim of capturing future space rocks and mining them.
Most asteroids orbit the sun within rings between Mars and Jupiter known as the asteroid belts. And importantly, some of those asteroids are full of metals that could be used to make laptops and smartphones; metals such as platinum, cobalt, iron, and even gold. NASA once calculated that the metals in these asteroids could be worth $100 million for every person on Earth, and mining even just 10 of the most profitable asteroids could yield up to $1.5 trillion.
A major question remains: Can we access these metals?
Every so often, Jupiter’s strong gravity sends an asteroid hurtling through the solar system, sometimes towards Earth. Last year, one of these asteroids entered Earth’s orbit: asteroid 2024 PT5 from the Arjuna asteroid belt that’s about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the sun.
2024 PT5 was called a “mini-moon,” though this term was used loosely. A mini-moon is supposed to complete one full orbit of the Earth, but asteroid 2024 PT5 exited Earth’s gravitational pull before it could make a whole trip. Still, the space rock mirrored our true moon’s orbit overhead, earning it the mini-moon moniker — and it was indeed full of rare earth metals.
Can we mine an asteroid?
While asteroid samples have been brought to Earth for research purposes before, such as with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and Japan’s Hayabusa2 missions, the cost of these journeys has fallen between about $10 million and $150 million per gram of material, which would bankrupt any company trying to turn a regular profit.
Part of the reason for this high price tag is most asteroids are usually so far away that mining them isn’t profitable. Fuel and equipment costs alone would add up quite a bit. However, that’s where mini-moons come in; these objects represent a far more achievable target for asteroid mining. After all, they’re right there above our heads. In fact, last year’s mini-moon sighting prompted many space-mining startups to make plans for more unexpected asteroid visits.
“If we had our systems up and running, we could go and get it,” Joel Sercel, founder and CEO of TransAstra, an asteroid mining company, told Space.com at the time 2024 PT5 was in orbit. “We would fly out to it, capture it, and put it in a very stable orbit with a very small amount of rocket propellant. Then we have a permanent resource in space that we own.”
There is one complication, however: Space entrepreneurs and scientific researchers disagree about how common mini-moons are, and fewer than 10 have been spotted within the last decade. What this means is that while there are many plans of how to capture these asteroids and use their metals, no one has ever pulled it off. What experts all agree on, though, is that reaching an asteroid in general is expensive and difficult.
“Sometimes they’re really hot; sometimes very cold,” Mustafa Hassanalian, an associate professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, told Space.com. “That’s something that makes it challenging, [along with the] radiation, it makes any missions to asteroids complex.”
At any given time, there are about a dozen small asteroids circling the Earth, but most of them aren’t big enough to make a trip worthwhile — but again, mini moons are just the right size to make mining them feasible economically..
The challenge lies in finding them. But a team of scientists at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which holds the world’s largest digital camera, has previously said that advances in asteroid detection will allow for better detection of mini-moons. With the observatory releasing its first images in June, space mining seems only a matter of time.
Who can mine it?
Chinese companies control between 80-90% of rare earth metal exports, which has pushed private companies in the U.S. and elsewhere to look for new sources in unlikely places. Copper — needed for wind turbines, nickel — required for solar panels, and platinum — vital for hydrogen-powered fuel cells — are found in abundance in certain asteroids.
Most rare materials on Earth come from previous asteroid impacts, but the Earth’s gravity has pulled heavier elements into its core over billions of years, leaving us with only a small amount of these metals close enough to the surface for mining.
The first asteroid ‘soft landing’ was unintentional, when NASA touched down NEAR Shoemaker on asteroid Eros in 2001 after it ran out of propellant. However, scientists were surprised the spacecraft survived the landing at all, and the mission shut down two weeks later due to cold temperatures on the asteroid. Since then, multiple nations have made contact with asteroids, with Japan following soon after with Hayabusa which launched in 2003, and Hayabusa2 that lifted off in 2014. NASA reached another asteroid with the aforementioned OSIRIS-REx mission, launching on Sept. 8, 2016 and dropping off its samples on Sept. 24, 2023, becoming the latest space mission to return asteroid samples for testing. China launched Tianwen-2 on May 28, 2025, and it is set to return asteroid samples in 2027.
So, why don’t we have a booming asteroid mining industry already? Well, aside from the cost issues mentioned, asteroids spin very quickly, which makes landing on them and extracting metals difficult. Sercel from TransAstra says that the spacecraft that take back asteroid samples aren’t really “landing” on the asteroids at all. Because asteroids don’t have strong gravity like planets, there’s nothing to keep the shapecraft tethered to the floor. Furthermore, because asteroids don’t have atmospheres like Earth or Mars, they’re vulnerable to the impact of thousands of tiny particles that kick up clouds of dust that would clog up any machinery. On previous mining missions, scientists got around this problem by using a robotic arm to grab pieces of debris before moving quickly away, but this tactic works only on small amounts of material.
As a result, instead of landing directly on the asteroid, space entrepreneurs are looking at ways to harvest the precious metals within asteroids without getting so close to the objects.
The mining players
Tethers Unlimited, a company born from the mind of science-fiction-author-turned-researcher R. L. Forward and researcher-turned-science-fiction-writer Rob Hoyt, worked with NASA to design a means of catching asteroids instead of landing on them.
The company’s satellites were designed to launch a gigantic net at the asteroid and capture it before towing it into Earth’s gravity, where smaller satellites would chip the metal away and bring it down to the planet more affordably. The net line is angled to stop the asteroid from tumbling and slow it down — the same way an ice skater might extend her leg to reduce spin speed.
But NASA ended funding for Tethers, so the design wasn’t produced in time to capture the mini-moon 2024 PT5. Hassanalian, a researcher at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, takes inspiration from the insect kingdom — with a design that deploys a net in front of an asteroid’s path, capturing it in a spiderweb-like mesh.
Meanwhile, TransAstra’s design also involves catching the asteroid instead of landing on it — but it does so using a more powerful tool than its competitors: the sun.
TransAstra plans to exploit what it calls “concentrated sunlight” to break up a water-rich asteroid. The company would deploy a giant plastic bag — made out of polyamide — to wrap the asteroid in, which Sercel compared to Mylar aluminum wrap or clingfilm, before using what amounts to a sophisticated magnifying glass to melt away the asteroid (which is mostly ice) and leaving the precious metals behind.
The mini moon is the “perfect size” for such a venture, says Sercel, although the mini moon unfortunately arrived before TransAstra was ready to take advantage of the opportunity. The company’s eyes are set on the next celestial visitor, which could arrive anywhere from a year to a decade from now.
“It’s not like you have the opportunity [to mine a mini-moon] every month,” Hoyt, of Tethers Unlimited, told Space.com “You could take a look at parking it in orbit around the Earth, but that would take a lot of propellant. You also need to be very careful you don’t drop it on the Earth.”
In 2029, NASA will launch its most ambitious asteroid-exploration mission to date, sending the Psyche probe to map out a metal-rich asteroid with the same name. It could set the stage for the first interstellar industry. The asteroid 16 Psyche is thought to be worth quadrillions of dollars (that’s 15 zeros), according to Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the lead scientist on the NASA mission, quoted in Global News.
It could be enough to crash the global economy, depending on how quickly the materials could be transported to Earth. Rare earth suppliers also face a problem familiar to the oil and gas industry: an increase in supply leading to a drop in prices, which makes extraction of raw materials less profitable.
And it would appear that most companies looking to bag an asteroid aren’t successful. Tethers had to close down after its funding ran out and its co-founder Robert Lull Forward, an American physicist and author of 11 novels, passed away.
Hoyt, the remaining founder, is also turning his hand toward writing a science fiction novel, one where the same devices he worked on for NASA can live on through imagination. For now, without the enormous amount of patient investment needed to make such businesses a reality, that’s where most asteroid mining technology will remain.
Source link
