Exploring a metal-rich asteroid could launch the start of space mining

NASA has launched a probe in the direction of a great metal asteroid called Psyche, located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid is of great interest to both scientists and people interested in accessing the abundant resources of the solar system.

NASA notes that Psyche is comprised of metal and silicate, the material that makes up glass, measuring 173 miles by 144 miles in diameter. It says the asteroid is the result of “multiple violent hit-and-run collisions” that occurred regularly during the early origins of the solar system. NASA believes “Psyche may be able to tell us how Earth’s core and the cores of the other rocky, or terrestrial, planets came to be.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory describes the mission’s objective to determine whether Psyche is the core of a failed planet. If it is, then it will be able to examine it to gain insights into the cores of planets such as Earth which are inaccessible to scientists. It will study a world mostly made of metal.

The Psyche probe, named after the asteroid it seeks to explore, carries a number of instruments, including a multispectral imager, a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, a magnetometer and an X-band gravity science investigation. It will also test a deep space optical communication device that will use lasers rather than radio waves to send data back to Earth at a much greater rate.

NASA launched the probe on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. It will travel to Psyche using Mars in a gravity assist maneuver, propelled by a solar electric propulsion system. The voyage will take five years and 10 months before the probe enters orbit around the asteroid. The plan is to spend 26 months in orbit around the asteroid Psyche performing scientific observations.

The Psyche mission will be a boon for science, unlocking numerous secrets about the creation of the solar system and its evolution. However, those who dream of mining the natural resources of space are also looking at the mission with keen interest.

One question that the Psyche mission could answer is how much the asteroid, which contains iron, nickel, gold and platinum, is actually worth. One estimate suggests that the riches of the asteroid Psyche may be worth $10 quintillion. Some estimates go as high as $700 quintillion. However, a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research pegs the worth of the asteroid at “merely” $11.65 trillion. Whichever the true figure is, it will be a prime target for asteroid miners sometime later this century.

Psyche will not be the first celestial body to be mined for its natural resources. The moon and a number of Earth-approaching asteroids are much closer. However, somebody, at some point, will want to access it for its abundant metals.

The first technology that must be developed before a mining operation is set up on Psyche or any other main-belt asteroid would be the ability to get to it in less than five or six years. The vast distances between Earth and Psyche would make mining the asteroid and returning its riches to manufacturing facilities in Earth’s orbit prohibitively expensive with current technology.

Nuclear or fusion propulsion would reduce the transit times between Earth and Psyche considerably. Then one can imagine a mining ship, carrying robots, voyaging to the metal asteroid and going to work, extracting and refining its resources and then carrying cargo back to service a space industrial infrastructure.

Psyche, as well as other celestial bodies in the solar system, represents an opportunity to create an economy based on abundance. As a bonus, mining asteroids does not create the environmental problems that mining on Earth does.

Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson suggested that the first trillionaire may well be an asteroid miner. He also suggested that mining asteroids and the moon would end armed conflicts over natural resources. 

“There’s this vast universe of limitless energy and limitless resources. I look at wars fought over access to resources. That could be a thing of the past, once space becomes our backyard,” he said.

Limitless resources and fewer reasons to fight wars are the real promises of the coming commercial space age.

Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.