Mining in space : can we do it ?

While the idea of exploi­ting resources on the Moon and other solar sys­tem bodies has been around for many years, with pro­mises of lunar bases and colo­nies on Mars, these ambi­tious dreams have yet to become reality.

The situa­tion might be chan­ging now, howe­ver, thanks to the advent of impro­ved tech­no­lo­gies, fal­ling costs of space tra­vel and the pri­vate sector’s rush to deve­lop com­pe­ti­tive ener­gies. Com­mer­cial deve­lop­ments in the space indus­try and the shor­tage of che­mi­cal ele­ments nee­ded for indus­try also means that we might have to look for resources elsew­here – on the Moon, aste­roids or, in the lon­ger term, other bodies fur­ther out in the solar system.

The aste­roid Psyche (which is about 200 km wide) could be 50% metal­lic, mea­ning it could contain the equi­va­lent of mil­lions of years of our annual glo­bal iron and nickel pro­duc­tion. And it is not only these metals that are attrac­ting future space prospectors.

Other aste­roids are rich in ele­ments that are very rare on Earth. These include pla­ti­num, iri­dium, osmium and pal­la­dium, which are all extre­me­ly impor­tant for indus­try and are used in pro­ducts as diverse as cata­ly­tic conver­ters, pace­ma­kers and medi­cal implants. Impor­tant­ly, they are also present in most modern elec­tro­nic com­po­nents. Since they are a limi­ted resource on Earth, their high cost may make the idea of mining them in space not such a far-fet­ched idea.

Clo­ser to home, the space indus­try is beco­ming increa­sin­gly inter­es­ted in the Moon. Not for rare metals, but for two other equal­ly stra­te­gic resources.

The first is water. Lunar orbit ana­lyses from scien­ti­fic explo­ra­tion probes such as the US Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbi­ter (LRO) and India’s Chandrayaan‑1 have confir­med that water exists on almost the entire sur­face of the Moon, but espe­cial­ly in the form of ice in cra­ters, per­ma­nent­ly in the shade, at the poles. Once puri­fied, this water could ini­tial­ly be used to meet the water requi­re­ments of astro­nauts on a lunar mis­sion. Once it has been sepa­ra­ted into its basic consti­tuents (oxy­gen and hydro­gen), howe­ver, it could pro­vide spa­ce­craft with fuel (this is what the Ariane 5 rocket’s main stage uses today).

What is more, it appears that solar winds have depo­si­ted large quan­ti­ties of helium‑3 (a light iso­tope of helium) in the equa­to­rial regions of the Moon. This helium‑3 is a poten­tial fuel source for second and third gene­ra­tion fusion reac­tors that are expec­ted to come into ope­ra­tion by the end of the century.

Would we be allo­wed to free­ly mine other celes­tial bodies ?

The 1967 Outer Space Trea­ty expli­cit­ly for­bids nations from clai­ming owner­ship of a celes­tial body. The Moon, for example, is a ‘com­mon good’. Howe­ver, it is easy to find loo­pholes in this text, which was writ­ten at a time of the Cold War when space-rela­ted concerns were very different.

One of the ‘ploys’ put for­ward by the US and other nations that want to deve­lop space mining is that, just as inter­na­tio­nal waters on Earth belong to no one, and that anyone can fish in them, coun­tries and com­pa­nies could de fac­to exploit and make their own the resources extrac­ted from celes­tial bodies – without actual­ly clai­ming the celes­tial bodies themselves.

To address these concerns, the Oba­ma admi­nis­tra­tion signed the so-cal­led “Space Act” in 2015, allo­wing US citi­zens to “engage in the explo­ra­tion and com­mer­cial exploi­ta­tion of space resources”.

In April 2020, the Trump admi­nis­tra­tion issued an exe­cu­tive order sup­por­ting US mining on the Moon and aste­roids. This was imme­dia­te­ly fol­lo­wed by NASA’s Arte­mis agree­ments in May 2020. These include the deve­lop­ment of ‘safe zones’ sur­roun­ding future lunar bases, pre­su­ma­bly to prevent dif­ferent coun­tries or com­pa­nies from step­ping on each other’s toes and poten­tial­ly trig­ge­ring diplo­ma­tic incidents.

We must remem­ber that the Uni­ted States is not the only coun­try wor­king on new legis­la­tion for future com­mer­cial space acti­vi­ties. Luxem­bourg and the Uni­ted Arab Emi­rates are codi­fying their own laws on space resources in the hope of attrac­ting invest­ment with busi­ness-friend­ly legal fra­me­works. Rus­sia, Japan, India and the Euro­pean Space Agen­cy are fol­lo­wing suite and all have their own space mining objectives.

While the real exploi­ta­tion of space resources has not yet begun, this new sec­tor is jam-packed with pri­vate-sec­tor can­di­dates. These come and go, howe­ver, as agree­ments are made and unmade, fun­ding is found and lost, and com­pa­nies go bankrupt.

Pla­ne­ta­ry Resources, foun­ded in 2009 with the aim of deve­lo­ping a robo­tic aste­roid mining indus­try, fell by the way­side in 2020 des­pite high-pro­file foun­ding inves­tors that inclu­ded Alpha­bet’s Lar­ry Page, for­mer Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Vir­gin Group foun­der Richard Branson.

Schak­le­ton Ener­gy Com­pa­ny, a Texas-based com­pa­ny foun­ded in 2007 to deve­lop tech­no­lo­gies for lunar mining, fai­led in 2013 because it was not able to raise enough funds in the two years that pre­ce­ded this date.

Other com­pa­nies have emer­ged since then, howe­ver, and are laying their stakes on an impor­tant future space indus­try. One example is Japan’s iSpace, which aims to ‘help com­pa­nies access new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties on the Moon’ (extrac­tion of water and mine­ral resources). Off­world, a Cali­for­nian com­pa­ny, is deve­lo­ping ‘uni­ver­sal indus­trial robots capable of doing most of the mining on Earth, the Moon, aste­roids and Mars’. The UK’s Aste­roid Mining Cor­po­ra­tion is cur­rent­ly fun­ding the deve­lop­ment of the ‘El Dora­do’ satel­lite, offi­cial­ly sche­du­led for launch in 2023. This satel­lite should conduct a broad spec­tral sur­vey of 5000 aste­roids to iden­ti­fy the ones most valuable for mining.

Howe­ver inter­es­ted the public or pri­vate sec­tor is in deve­lo­ping extrac­tive acti­vi­ties for extra­ter­res­trial resources, the task will be far from easy.

If we are to mine the Moon, for example, we will have to over­come a num­ber of spe­ci­fic pro­blems. At the lunar poles tem­pe­ra­tures go from 120˚C during the day to ‑232˚C at night, and radia­tion from cos­mic rays, which are not deflec­ted by a pla­ne­ta­ry magne­tic field, like that of the Earth’s, creates a very hos­tile envi­ron­ment. As the Apol­lo astro­nauts also dis­co­ve­red, lunar dust is extre­me­ly fine and high­ly abra­sive, so moving parts on mecha­ni­cal machi­ne­ry must be pro­tec­ted. Lubri­ca­tion and cooling are very dif­fi­cult too, as the majo­ri­ty of oils and coolants disin­te­grate or eva­po­rate in a vacuum.

The situa­tion on aste­roids in not much bet­ter. Although the tech­no­lo­gies deve­lo­ped in recent years to reach, fly over and approach the sur­face of aste­roids have evol­ved consi­de­ra­bly, thanks to the deve­lop­ment of scien­ti­fic explo­ra­tion probes such as Haya­bu­sa 2 (Japan) or Osi­ris-Rex (USA), the tech­niques for mining and har­ves­ting mate­rials in zero gra­vi­ty have yet to be deve­lo­ped and tested.

Final­ly, we should remem­ber that public bodies are also active in this field. In 2019, Aria­ne­Group signed a contract with the Euro­pean Space Agen­cy to stu­dy the pos­si­bi­li­ty of going to the Moon before 2025 and start wor­king there. For this stu­dy, Aria­ne­Group and its sub­si­dia­ry Aria­nes­pace have tea­med up with a Ger­man start-up, PT Scien­tists, which will sup­ply the lan­der, and a Bel­gian SME, Space Appli­ca­tions Ser­vices, which will sup­ply the ground seg­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment and asso­cia­ted ser­vice operations.