Leading space agencies no longer view space mining as a kind of utopia. Everything goes to the fact that the conquest of asteroids for industrial purposes will become quite commonplace. The first steps, such as the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission and NASA's Osiris mission, have already been taken. The discussion of the space mining industry was held the other day at the 2016 Space Commerce Conference and Exposition.
Despite the fact that now almost all experts agree that the extraction of resources in space, such as water, is too expensive and risky, there are already companies that are seriously planning to organize a space mining industry. Already today, projects are being developed to conquer space bodies with the help of robotic stations and space flights of people. Representatives of these companies are confident that even the Earth's satellite, the Moon, has serious potential and stores precious metal deposits in its depths.
An example of such a company is Planetary Resources, which has already developed an ambitious project for the extraction of resources on asteroids. First of all, the project provides for the extraction of platinum, iridium and rhodium in space. This suggests that the 'gold rush' in relation to space is a conventional name – first of all, people are interested in rare resources that are hardly available on Earth.
In 2015, a space mining machine developed by the company was launched from the International Space Station for the first time. Representatives of the company are confident that the device called Arkyd 3 Reflight will more than pay off the money invested in it.
In fact, 'precious' asteroids are not uncommon in near-Earth space. So on July 19, 2015, the platinum asteroid 2011 UW-158, consisting of platinum and other precious metals, flew near the Earth. At its core, the cosmic body was a huge nugget containing more than one hundred million tons of pure platinum, which in terms of the American currency is $ 5.4 trillion.
Author: Kolupaev Dmitry
