Due to the rapid increase in the world population and the rapid depletion of natural resources, it has become necessary to search for new mineral resources. Since the natural resources in the world are not sufficient for the increasing needs, the idea of space mining, an interesting plan, has emerged. Mining studies based on obtaining minerals from asteroids in space are called space mining.
It is estimated that mineral reserves such as copper, tin, zinc, silver, lead and gold, which are the most used in industry and have high economic value, will be exhausted in the next hundred years. Experts think that valuable elements such as platinum and cobalt, whose production is gradually decreasing, should be extracted from asteroids and brought to Earth.
According to research, sending a spacecraft to the nearest 500-ton asteroid and bringing the needed minerals to Earth can take 6 to 10 years. It has been calculated that the cost of obtaining minerals from a single asteroid could be $ 2.6 billion. It is estimated that the yield of minerals such as iron, nickel, titanium, gold, manganese, palladium and tungsten that can be extracted from meteorites with precious metals may reach trillion dollars in the near future. If the mine in a meteorite with dense iron ore is extracted, 2-3 times the annual iron production in the world will be obtained. It is known that the 16 Psyche (Sayki) meteorites detected by NASA have enough iron to meet the majority of the iron need of the Earth.
It is thought that the transportation cost of the mines to be brought from space will be quite high. Companies produce various projects in order to reduce the cost in space mining. To these projects; These are examples of sending robots to asteroids and bringing more than a few tons of minerals, developing a different system that will bring small-sized asteroids to Earth, or processing the mine in spacecraft with spaceships.
Although realizing space mining projects is difficult and costly today, it is predicted that this sector may reach trillion dollars in the near future.
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Engineer For Space 