You might assume asteroid mining aims to extract resources, returning them to Earth for a ready supply of precious metals. That’s what AstroForge is all about.
The Huntington Beach, California-based company is on a mission to help Earth find the materials we need in space. “Platinum group metals have an essential role in almost everything we interact with daily,” says Matt Gialich, CEO and founder of AstroForge. “They represent a massive market on Earth, but resources are dwindling.
“We want to help meet demand by extracting sustainably, and if we can, mine, refine and use materials directly in space. We can build infra- structure without needing constant resupply missions. It makes the economics of space exploration much more sustainable.”
But won’t any decent economist tell you flooding a market with sudden overabundant supply devalues a commodity – what’s so special about a diamond if it’s so plentiful it becomes as cheap as plastic?
The Winklevoss twins (famous for Facebook’s early years) sparked a minor internet incident when they told a podcast host Bitcoin was a better investment than gold because ‘There’s billions of dollars of gold floating in asteroids around this planet, and Elon [Musk] is gonna get up there and start mining gold. […] That’s why gold is a problem, because the supply isn’t fixed like Bitcoin.
But LaBrasca says platinum group metals – AstroForge’s target – are a different story. “If asteroid mining scales to the point of flooding the market it might change how we value these materials, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” she says. “Imagine a future where materials are affordable enough to fuel massive advancements in technology, medicine or infrastructure. It’s less about maintaining artificial scarcity and more about unlocking potential for innovation.”
In fact, Professor Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory says we’ve seen it happen. “Aluminium didn’t lose its value when it became more widely available,” she says, “it simply became used in more applications.”
Beyond that, material extraction for sustainable applications on Earth isn’t the only point of asteroid mining – or even the most important one, depending on who you ask. Professor Gretchen Benedix, a founding member of Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre, describes the acronym ‘in situ resource utilisation’ (ISRU). “It’s about a springboard,” she says. “It’s about being self-sustaining when you go into space.”
Benedix draws a comparison with going camping, where you take everything you need in and out again. Applied to space travel, that means a lot of fuel – and you need between 60 and 90 percent of your total just to leave Earth). Finding or making fuel during the trip would make space travel far easier.
And the potential answer is deceptively simple; ice. In the cold of space, plenty of bodies have (or are expected to have) large reserves of ice, and ice means water.
You might immediately think that means using local water to support extraterrestrial human outposts, grow food, etc, but there’s an even more important use case. Any year nine science class can use electrolysis to split water into into hydrogen and oxygen, and even though we’ll need all-new engineering to figure out how to power it and do it in deep space (solar? nuclear? autonomous robots?), the essential process remains.
And oxygen means a resource that’s just about the most precious thing you can find in space; rocket fuel.
All of which means asteroid mining is barely even about economics and investments but something far loftier. “Essentially, asteroids become stepping stones for the future of humanity’s presence beyond Earth,” says DellaGiustina. “It’s about creating infrastructure for a self-sustaining economy which can make space exploration cheaper and more feasible by reducing dependence on Earth-bound supply chains.”
A new understanding
The possibility of mining asteroids has also come closer as we’ve learned more about them. Benedix recalls how, when she was studying for her Masters in the early 1990s, astronomers had to assume asteroids were essentially spherical, because there was little visual evidence to the contrary. Even generations of pop culture has taught us asteroids are huge solid clumps of rock Bruce Willis can drill a hole on and drop a nuclear bomb into.
But just like Socrates, more study only confirms how little we know. When NASA’s OSIRIS REx arrived at the asteroid 101955 Bennu in December 2018, video from the sample collection mission was startling. The Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) used to collect material caused a shower of debris – Bennu (at least where OSIRIS REx touched down) wasn’t solid at all but loosely packed gravel.
“OSIRIS-REx’s interaction with Bennu highlights the challenges around capturing materials without destabilising the asteroid,” says DellaGiustina, “That means we need missions to study the compositions and structures before we go to extract resources.”
Another milestone came with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection test (DART) in September 2022 when a probe impacted Dimorphous, part of a twin asteroid system.
DART was actually about planetary defense in case the nightmares of hundreds of Hollywood screenwriters come true and we find an extinction-level bolide on a collision course, but it bolstered the possibility of asteroid mining in critical ways.
Firstly were the quantum leaps in autonomous navigation and impactor technology. The comparatively low impact DART mission also didn’t destroy Dimorphous, it just ‘nudged’ it.
That made it a spectacularly successful proof of concept about the potential to move bodies to orbits or positions that suit us – a critical ability we’ll need for rocks we want to access and use rather than obliterate. Every successful space mission emboldens us (and those who hold purse strings) to reach further.
User pays?
Of course, nobody goes anywhere in space without someone realising a return on their investment. For public agencies that means convincing politicians there’s a strategic geopolitical advantage. In the private sector, that means you’re either a billionaire with multi-generational aims or you need to convince investors there’s a profitable business model.
But even though mining an asteroid to bring back a saddlebag of diamonds isn’t the point, we’re still waiting for the pivot that will make it economically viable. What is it, and how do we find – even hasten – it?
“It’ll come from a mix of advancing technology, falling costs and increasing demand for resources – which is the point we’re at now,” says LaBrasca. “Reusable rockets, better, cheaper spacecraft and more efficient mining and refining systems are all making space mining more practical. Then there’s demand. The need for materials is growing for things like EVs and renewable energy and Earth’s resources are limited and increasingly expensive to extract, so at some point, asteroid mining will become the better option economically and environmentally.”
DellaGiustina thinks the formation of legal and regulatory structures will also contribute. “Another tipping point is likely to come from policy support,” she says, “clear regulations and incentivising early investment can de-risk asteroid mining.”
Benedix also reminds us that both the world and our culture changes economies and commodities, and asteroid mining will do the same. “The economic value of critical resources has changed over history. 1000 years ago salt was a critical resource, worth more than oil,” she points out.
Consider Coltan, used to make the tantalum capacitors in personal electronics. The mobile phone age has increased demand by up to a hundred fold since 1950, and today extraction in some very politically sensitive parts of the world makes it something of a necessary evil. Or water, abundant and plentiful for most of human history but which will become so precious in asteroid mining it will underpin the whole industry.
The spoils
That said, legislation and regulation are notoriously bad at keeping up with rapidly advancing technology. Just look at the internet – from Napster to AI, digital platforms have left lawmakers and governments scrambling to understand impacts, let alone build guardrails around cultural, scientific and economic safety.
While space exploration is slower moving and the barrier to entry much higher, there are still risks. If asteroids contain some substance with the potential to transform the global economy and give the discoverer untold political and market power, how will smaller, poorer countries without their own space agencies or industries (or multibillionaires) get a look in?
Benedix refers to historical examples when people penetrated new frontiers, got established and only started thinking about rules later, and she also thinks there’s an argument against what she calls ‘treaty-ising’ the field too early. “You kind of have to let it be a little bit of a free-for-all because you can’t define a relevant framework until you get there,” she says.
Besides, it’s worth remembering that frameworks to exploit space resources already exist, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Treaty.
Then there’s the more recent Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which allows US companies to explore and exploit space resources but affirms that the US doesn’t ‘assert sovereignty, or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body’.
“International consensus is still evolving,” DellaGiustina says. “Companies are pushing forward under the assumption the legal framework will catch up. A clear and predictable regulatory environment will encourage more investment, but the industry probably won’t wait for perfect clarity, it’ll develop iteratively as the technology progresses.”
In fact, we even have a model for peaceful international co-stewardship of a piece of nature that’s worked for decades; the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which asserts Earth’s only continent not natively inhabited by humans will be used for peaceful purposes, any scientific discoveries to be shared.
It’s hard not to be a little cynical, of course. The above agreements were signed when asteroid mining was the domain of Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov rather than SpaceX and AstroForge, and nobody stands to make trillions of dollars from Antarctica or the moon just yet. And history has proven how powerful governments and their militaries have a way of getting around treaties when economic advantage or political supremacy is at stake time and time again…
The expanding universe
For now, it’s early days. Benedix offers a casual estimate asteroid mining won’t be an entrenched, self-sufficient industry for a century, but companies like AstroForge wouldn’t exist if their backers didn’t think they’d see a return on their investment in their lifetime.
For now, every successful launch and every probe that touches down on an extraplanetary body elevates the industry as a whole. As DellaGiustina says, more launches means more testing of new technologies, and makes it even more attractive for private investment. “In the long term, that accessibility lays the groundwork for regular traffic to and from space, and that’s what space industries like mining will need,” she says.
As a scientist, Benedix asks if we might in fact be putting too much emphasis on the economic outcomes of asteroid mining. Precious metals, stock market valuations and saving the earth through the sustainable provision of the materials we use every day are all urgent and important problems to solve.
But many people consider the longer term goals more important – even for their capacity to solve the problems we have on the ground today. Asteroid mining will let exploratory craft refine and process the fuels for the next leg of their journeys, exploring in self-powered stages and expanding humanity’s understanding of the universe further than ever before.
And whether it’s landing on the moon, looking for life with programs like SETI or mining asteroids, that’s what our species’ relationship with space has always been about.