X-energy is developing a pebble bed reactor that they say can't melt down

July 23, 2018

Original link:  https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/x-energy-developing-pebble-bed-reactor-they-say-cant-melt-down

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X-energy is developing a pebble bed reactor that they say can't melt down.

 

More than 50 U.S. companies are developing advanced reactor designs that will bring enhanced safety, efficiency and economics to the nuclear energy industry.

X-energy, located just outside the nation’s capital in Greenbelt, MD, is working on a pebble bed, high temperature gas-cooled reactor that the company says can’t meltdown.

X-energy is developing its Xe-100 reactor and specialized uranium-based pebble fuel that could be available in the market as early as the late 2020s.

The U.S. Department of Energy has already invested more than $30 million through two separate cost-shared agreements to further develop their design and demonstrate a production process for its fuel.

How it works

The Xe-100 is an advanced modular reactor with each unit designed to produce around 76 megawatts of electric power.

The reactor core is made of graphite and filled with 15.5% enriched fuel pebbles. Each pebble (roughly the size of a billiard ball) contains thousands of specially coated Tristructural Isotropic (TRISO) uranium fuel particles that are virtually indestructible.

The TRISO coating creates an airtight seal around the uranium kernel. This helps retain fission products and gases that are produced during operations and would allow the plant to be constructed within 500 meters of factories or urban areas.

The fresh pebbles are loaded in the reactor like a gumball machine and helium is pumped down through the pebble bed to extract the heat into a steam generator that produces electricity.

The reactor continuously refuels by adding fresh pebbles daily in at the top, as older ones are discharged from the bottom of the core. Each pebble remains in the core for a little more than 3 years and are circulated through the core up to six times to achieve full burnup. The spent fuel is then placed directly into dry casks and stored on-site—without the need for interim or active cooling.

Benefits of the Xe-100

The Xe-100 is designed to operate at high temperatures to produce electricity more efficiently. The high temperature helium gas can also be used in energy-intensive processes that currently rely on fossil fuels, such as hydrogen production and petroleum refining.

X-energy

This reactor concept can also be designed to incorporate passive cooling through natural conduction, thermal radiation and convection in the case of a loss of helium coolant—meaning it doesn’t have to rely on large local water sources, pumps, or safety systems to prevent fuel damage.

Other benefits include:

• Ability to load follow (from 100% to 40% power within 20 minutes), making the plant complementary to maintaining a stable load on a grid that includes renewables
• Continuous fueling and on-site fuel storage, delivering high availability (93-95%) while ensuring plant resiliency
• Reduced construction time (2.5 – 4 years for a 300 MWe plant)
• Factory-produced major components, enabling improved quality control while reducing per unit costs.

What’s Next?

X-energy is on schedule to complete its Xe-100 conceptual design by the end of 2019 and has successfully fabricated its first fuel pebbles using natural uranium at a pilot scale fuel facility, on-site at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The company was recently awarded additional DOE assistance to design a commercial scale “TRISO-X” fuel fabrication facility and submit a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license application for the facility by mid-2021.

The company plans to complete TRISO-X Facility construction by the mid-2020s. Since the TRISO uranium particle is the basis for multiple advanced reactor fuel designs, the TRISO-X Facility could become a key enabler for deployment of the U.S. advanced reactor industry over the next several years.

Learn more about this project.

Kurzweil’s Law (aka “the law of accelerating returns”)

January 12, 2004 by Ray Kurzweil
Original link:  http://www.kurzweilai.net/kurzweils-law-aka-the-law-of-accelerating-returns
Published on Edge.org and KurzweilAI.net Jan. 12, 2003

In an evolutionary process, positive feedback increases order exponentially. A correlate is that the “returns” of an evolutionary process (such as the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall “power” of a process) increase exponentially over time — both for biology and technology. Ray Kurzweil submitted on essay based on that premise to Edge.org in response to John Brockman’s question: “What’s your law?”

Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. Each epoch of evolution has progressed more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage.

Evolution works through indirection: evolution created humans, humans created technology, humans are now working with increasingly advanced technology to create new generations of technology. As a result, the rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases exponentially over time.

Over time, the “order” of the information embedded in the evolutionary process (i.e., the measure of how well the information fits a purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases.

A comment on the nature of order. The concept of the “order” of information is important here, as it is not the same as the opposite of disorder. If disorder represents a random sequence of events, then the opposite of disorder should imply “not random.” Information is a sequence of data that is meaningful in a process, such as the DNA code of an organism, or the bits in a computer program. Noise, on the other hand, is a random sequence. Neither noise nor information is predictable. Noise is inherently unpredictable, but carries no information. Information, however, is also unpredictable. If we can predict future data from past data, then that future data stops being information. We might consider an alternating pattern (“0101010. . . .”) to be orderly, but it carries no information (beyond the first couple of bits).

Thus orderliness does not constitute order because order requires information. However, order goes beyond mere information. A recording of radiation levels from space represents information, but if we double the size of this data file, we have increased the amount of data, but we have not achieved a deeper level of order.

Order is information that fits a purpose. The measure of order is the measure of how well the information fits the purpose. In the evolution of life-forms, the purpose is to survive. In an evolutionary algorithm (a computer program that simulates evolution to solve a problem) applied to, say, investing in the stock market, the purpose is to make money. Simply having more information does not necessarily result in a better fit. A superior solution for a purpose may very well involve less data.

The concept of “complexity” is often used to describe the nature of the information created by an evolutionary process. Complexity is a close fit to the concept of order that I am describing, but is also not sufficient. Sometimes, a deeper order – a better fit to a purpose – is achieved through simplification rather than further increases in complexity. For example, a new theory that ties together apparently disparate ideas into one broader more coherent theory reduces complexity but nonetheless may increase the “order for a purpose” that I am describing. Indeed, achieving simpler theories is a driving force in science. Evolution has shown, however, that the general trend towards greater order does generally result in greater complexity.

Thus improving a solution to a problem – which may increase or decrease complexity – increases order. Now that just leaves the issue of defining the problem. Indeed, the key to an evolution algorithm (and to biological and technological evolution) is exactly this: defining the problem.

We may note that this aspect of “Kurzweil’s Law” (the law of accelerating returns) appears to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which implies that entropy (randomness in a closed system) cannot decrease, and, therefore, generally increases. However, the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, and evolution is not a closed system. It takes place amidst great chaos, and indeed depends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options for diversity. And from these options, an evolutionary process continually prunes its choices to create ever greater order. Even a crisis, such as the periodic large asteroids that have crashed into the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up increasing – deepening – the order created by an evolutionary process.

A primary reason that evolution – of life-forms or of technology – speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing order, with ever more sophisticated means of recording and manipulating information. Innovations created by evolution encourage and enable faster evolution. In the case of the evolution of life forms, the most notable early example is DNA, which provides a recorded and protected transcription of life’s design from which to launch further experiments. In the case of the evolution of technology, ever improving human methods of recording information have fostered further technology. The first computers were designed on paper and assembled by hand. Today, they are designed on computer workstations with the computers themselves working out many details of the next generation’s design, and are then produced in fully-automated factories with human guidance but limited direct intervention.

The evolutionary process of technology seeks to improve capabilities in an exponential fashion. Innovators seek to improve things by multiples. Innovation is multiplicative, not additive. Technology, like any evolutionary process, builds on itself. This aspect will continue to accelerate when the technology itself takes full control of its own progression.

We can thus conclude the following with regard to the evolution of life-forms, and of technology: the law of accelerating returns as applied to an evolutionary process: An evolutionary process is not a closed system; therefore, evolution draws upon the chaos in the larger system in which it takes place for its options for diversity; and evolution builds on its own increasing order. Therefore, in an evolutionary process, order increases exponentially.

A correlate of the above observation is that the “returns” of an evolutionary process (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall “power” of a process) increase exponentially over time. We see this in Moore’s law, in which each new generation of computer chip (now spaced about two years apart) provides twice as many components, each of which operates substantially faster (because of the smaller distances required for the electrons to travel, and other innovations). This exponential growth in the power and price-performance of information-based technologies – now roughly doubling every year – is not limited to computers, but is true for a wide range of technologies, measured many different ways.

In another positive feedback loop, as a particular evolutionary process (e.g., computation) becomes more effective (e.g., cost effective), greater resources are deployed towards the further progress of that process. This results in a second level of exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential growth itself grows exponentially). For example, it took three years to double the price-performance of computation at the beginning of the twentieth century, two years around 1950, and is now doubling about once a year. Not only is each chip doubling in power each year for the same unit cost, but the number of chips being manufactured is growing exponentially.

Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process. Indeed it is the quintessential evolutionary process. It took place in a completely open system (as opposed to the artificial constraints in an evolutionary algorithm). Thus many levels of the system evolved at the same time.

Technological evolution is another such evolutionary process. Indeed, the emergence of the first technology-creating species resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology. Therefore, technological evolution is an outgrowth of – and a continuation of – biological evolution. Early stages of humanoid created technology were barely faster than the biological evolution that created our species. Homo sapiens evolved in a few hundred thousand years. Early stages of technology – the wheel, fire, stone tools – took tens of thousands of years to evolve and be widely deployed. A thousand years ago, a paradigm shift such as the printing press, took on the order of a century to be widely deployed. Today, major paradigm shifts, such as cell phones and the world wide web were widely adopted in only a few years time.

A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem, e.g., shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit as an approach to making more powerful computers) provides exponential growth until the method exhausts its potential. When this happens, a paradigm shift (a fundamental change in the approach) occurs, which enables exponential growth to continue.

Each paradigm follows an “S-curve,” which consists of slow growth (the early phase of exponential growth), followed by rapid growth (the late, explosive phase of exponential growth), followed by a leveling off as the particular paradigm matures.

During this third or maturing phase in the life cycle of a paradigm, pressure builds for the next paradigm shift, and research dollars are invested to create the next paradigm. We can see this in the enormous investments being made today in the next computing paradigm – three-dimensional molecular computing – despite the fact that we still have at least a decade left for the paradigm of shrinking transistors on a flat integrated circuit using photolithography (Moore’s Law). Generally, by the time a paradigm approaches its asymptote (limit) in price-performance, the next technical paradigm is already working in niche applications. For example, engineers were shrinking vacuum tubes in the 1950s to provide greater price-performance for computers, and reached a point where it was no longer feasible to shrink tubes and maintain a vacuum. At this point, around 1960, transistors had already achieved a strong niche market in portable radios.

When a paradigm shift occurs for a particular type of technology, the process begins a new S-curve.
Thus the acceleration of the overall evolutionary process proceeds as a sequence of S-curves, and the overall exponential growth consists of this cascade of S-curves.

The resources underlying the exponential growth of an evolutionary process are relatively unbounded.

One resource is the (ever-growing) order of the evolutionary process itself. Each stage of evolution provides more powerful tools for the next. In biological evolution, the advent of DNA allowed more powerful and faster evolutionary “experiments.” Later, setting the “designs” of animal body plans during the Cambrian explosion allowed rapid evolutionary development of other body organs, such as the brain. Or to take a more recent example, the advent of computer-assisted design tools allows rapid development of the next generation of computers.

The other required resource is the “chaos” of the environment in which the evolutionary process takes place and which provides the options for further diversity. In biological evolution, diversity enters the process in the form of mutations and ever- changing environmental conditions. In technological evolution, human ingenuity combined with ever-changing market conditions keep the process of innovation going.

If we apply these principles at the highest level of evolution on Earth, the first step, the creation of cells, introduced the paradigm of biology. The subsequent emergence of DNA provided a digital method to record the results of evolutionary experiments. Then, the evolution of a species that combined rational thought with an opposable appendage (the thumb) caused a fundamental paradigm shift from biology to technology. The upcoming primary paradigm shift will be from biological thinking to a hybrid combining biological and nonbiological thinking. This hybrid will include “biologically inspired” processes resulting from the reverse engineering of biological brains.

If we examine the timing of these steps, we see that the process has continuously accelerated. The evolution of life forms required billions of years for the first steps (e.g., primitive cells); later on progress accelerated. During the Cambrian explosion, major paradigm shifts took only tens of millions of years. Later on, Humanoids developed over a period of millions of years, and Homo sapiens over a period of only hundreds of thousands of years.

With the advent of a technology-creating species, the exponential pace became too fast for evolution through DNA-guided protein synthesis and moved on to human-created technology. Technology goes beyond mere tool making; it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous round of innovation, and is, thereby, an evolutionary process. As I noted, the first technological took tens of thousands of years. For people living in this era, there was little noticeable technological change in even a thousand years. By 1000 AD, progress was much faster and a paradigm shift required only a century or two. In the nineteenth century, we saw more technological change than in the nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century. Now, paradigm shifts occur in only a few years time.

The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical progress) is currently doubling (approximately) every decade; that is, paradigm shift times are halving every decade (and the rate of acceleration is itself growing exponentially). So, the technological progress in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to what would require (in the linear view) on the order of 200 centuries. In contrast, the twentieth century saw only about 20 years of progress (again at today’s rate of progress) since we have been speeding up to current rates. So the twenty-first century will see about a thousand times greater technological change than its predecessor.

Nanotechnology and the Environment

Original link:  https://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-and-the-environment.php

Nanotechnological products, processes and applications are expected to contribute significantly to environmental and climate protection by saving raw materials, energy and water as well as by reducing greenhouse gases and hazardous wastes. Using nanomaterials therefore promises certain environmental benefits and sustainability effects. Note, however, that nanotechnology currently plays a rather subordinate role in environmental protection, whether it be in research or in practical applications. Environmental engineering companies themselves attach only limited importance to nanotechnology in their respective fields.

Potential environmental benefits

Rising prices for raw materials and energy, coupled with the increasing environmental awareness of consumers, are responsible for a flood of products on the market that promise certain advantages for environmental and climate protection. Nanomaterials exhibit special physical and chemical properties that make them interesting for novel, environmentally friendly products.

Examples include the increased durability of materials against mechanical stress or weathering, helping to increase the useful life of a product; nanotechnology-based dirt- and water-resistant coatings to reduce cleaning efforts; novel insulation materials to improve the energy efficiency of buildings; adding nanoparticles to a material to reduce weight and save energy during transport. In the chemical industry sector, nanomaterials are applied based on their special catalytic properties in order to boost energy and resource efficiency, and nanomaterials can replace environmentally problematic chemicals in certain fields of application. High hopes are being placed in nano-technologically optimized products and processes for energy production and storage; these are currently in the development phase and are slated to contribute significantly to climate protection and solving our energy problems in the future.

In most commercially available “nano-consumer products“, environmental protection is not the primary goal. Neither textiles with nanosilver to combat perspiration odor, nor especially stable golf clubs with carbon nanotubes, help protect the environment. Manufacturers often promise such advantages, typically without providing the relevant evidence. Examples include self-cleaning surface coatings or textiles with spot protection, with are advertized as reducing the cleaning effort and therefore saving energy, water and cleaning agents.

Emphasis is often placed on the sustainable potential of where nanotechnology will take us. Nonetheless, this usually reflects unsubstantiated expectations. Determining the actual effects of a product on the environment – both positive and negative – requires examining the entire life cycle from production of the raw material to disposal at the end of the life cycle. As a rule, the descriptions of environmental benefits fail to consider the amount of resources and energy consumed in producing the products. (read more: "Nanotechnology and the environment - Potential benefits and sustainability effects")

Specific examples of nanotechnology applications that benefit the environment

Nanotechnology could make battery recycling economically attractive

Many batteries still contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel, which can contaminate the environment and pose a potential threat to human health when batteries are improperly disposed of. Not only do the billions upon billions of batteries in landfills pose an environmental problem, they also are a complete waste of a potential and cheap raw material. Researchers have managed to recover pure zinc oxide nanoparticles from spent Zn-MnO2 batteries alkaline batteries.

Nanomaterials for radioactive waste clean-up in water

Scientists are working on nanotechnology solution for radioactive waste cleanup, specifically the use of titanate nanofibers as absorbents for the removal of radioactive ions from water. Researchers have also reported that the unique structural properties of titanate nanotubes and nanofibers make them superior materials for removal of radioactive cesium and iodine ions in water.

Nanotechnology-based solutions for oil spills

Conventional clean-up techniques are not adequate to solve the problem of massive oil spills. In recent years, nanotechnology has emerged as a potential source of novel solutions to many of the world's outstanding problems. Although the application of nanotechnology for oil spill cleanup is still in its nascent stage, it offers great promise for the future. In the last couple of years, there has been particularly growing interest worldwide in exploring ways of finding suitable solutions to clean up oil spills through use of nanomaterials.

Water applications

The potential impact areas for nanotechnology in water applications are divided into three categories – treatment and remediation, sensing and detection, and pollution prevention – (read more: "Nanotechnology and water treatment") and the improvement of desalination technologies is one key area thereof. Nanotechnology-based water purification devices have the potential to transform the field of desalination, for instance by using the ion concentration polarization phenomenon (see: "Nanotechnology makes portable seawater desalination device possible").

Another, relatively new method of purifying brackish water is capacitive deionization (CDI) technology. The advantages of CDI are that it has no secondary pollution, is cost-effective and energy efficient. Nanotechnology researchers have developed a CDI application that uses graphene-like nanoflakes as electrodes for capacitive deionization. They found that the graphene electrodes resulted in a better CDI performance than the conventionally used activated carbon materials.

Carbon dioxide capture

The dirtiest method – at least until highly efficient carbon capture and sequestration technologies are developed – is the gasification of coal (read more: "Nanotechnology could clean up the hydrogen car's dirty little secret"). The cleanest by far would be renewable energy electrolysis: using renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, geo- and hydrothermal power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Artificial photosynthesis, using solar energy to split water generating hydrogen and oxygen, can offer a clean and portable source of energy supply as durable as the sunlight. It takes about 2.5 volts to break a single water molecule down into oxygen along with negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. It is the extraction and separation of these oppositely charged electrons and protons from water molecules that provides the electric power.

Before CO2 can be stored in Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) schemes, it must be separated from the other waste gases resulting from combustion or industrial processes. Most current methods used for this type of filtration are expensive and require the use of chemicals. Nanotechnology techniques to fabricate nanoscale thin membranes could lead to new membrane technology that could change that.

Hydrogen production from sunlight - artificial photosynthesis

Companies developing hydrogen-powered technologies like to wrap themselves in the green glow of environmentally friendly technology that will save the planet. While hydrogen fuel indeed is a clean energy carrier, the source of that hydrogen often is as dirty as it gets. The problem is that you can't dig a well to tap hydrogen, but hydrogen has to be produced, and that can be done using a variety of resources.

Working on the nanoscale, researchers have shown that an inexpensive and environmentally benign inorganic light harvesting nanocrystal array can be combined with a low-cost electrocatalyst that contains abundant elements to fabricate an inexpensive and stable system for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production.

Asteroid mining

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Artist's concept of asteroid mining

433 Eros is a stony asteroid in a near-Earth orbit

Asteroid mining is the exploitation of raw materials from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-Earth objects.

Minerals can be mined from an asteroid or spent comet then used in space for construction materials or taken back to Earth. These include gold, iridium, silver, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium and tungsten for transport back to Earth; iron, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, aluminium, and titanium for construction.

Due to the high launch and transportation costs of spaceflight, inaccurate identification of asteroids suitable for mining, and in-situ ore extraction challenges, terrestrial mining remains the only means of raw mineral acquisition today. If space program funding, either public or private, dramatically increases, this situation is likely to change in the future as resources on Earth are becoming increasingly scarce and the full potentials of asteroid mining—and space exploration in general—are researched in greater detail.^[1]:47f However, it is yet uncertain whether asteroid mining will develop to attain the volume and composition needed in due time to fully compensate for dwindling terrestrial reserves.^[2][3][4]

Purpose

Based on known terrestrial reserves, and growing consumption in both developed and developing countries, key elements needed for modern industry and food production could be exhausted on Earth within 50–60 years.^[5] These include phosphorus, antimony, zinc, tin, lead, indium, silver, gold and copper.^[6] In response, it has been suggested that platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may be mined and sent to Earth for profit, used to build solar-power satellites and space habitats,^[7][8] and water processed from ice to refuel orbiting propellant depots.^[9][10][11]

Although asteroids and Earth accreted from the same starting materials, Earth's relatively stronger gravity pulled all heavy siderophilic (iron-loving) elements into its core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago.^[12][13][14] This left the crust depleted of such valuable elements until a rain of asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals like gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium and tungsten (some flow from core to surface does occur, e.g. at the Bushveld Igneous Complex, a famously rich source of platinum-group metals)^{[citation needed]}. Today, these metals are mined from Earth's crust, and they are essential for economic and technological progress. Hence, the geologic history of Earth may very well set the stage for a future of asteroid mining.

In 2006, the Keck Observatory announced that the binary Jupiter trojan 617 Patroclus,^[15] and possibly large numbers of other Jupiter trojans, are likely extinct comets and consist largely of water ice. Similarly, Jupiter-family comets, and possibly near-Earth asteroids that are extinct comets, might also provide water. The process of in-situ resource utilization—using materials native to space for propellant, thermal management, tankage, radiation shielding, and other high-mass components of space infrastructure—could lead to radical reductions in its cost.^[16] Although whether these cost reductions could be achieved, and if achieved would offset the enormous infrastructure investment required, is unknown.

Ice would satisfy one of two necessary conditions to enable "human expansion into the Solar System" (the ultimate goal for human space flight proposed by the 2009 "Augustine Commission" Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee): physical sustainability and economic sustainability.^[17]

From the astrobiological perspective, asteroid prospecting could provide scientific data for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Some astrophysicists have suggested that if advanced extraterrestrial civilizations employed asteroid mining long ago, the hallmarks of these activities might be detectable.^[18][19][20] Why extraterrestrials would have resorted to asteroid mining in near proximity to earth, with its readily available resources, has not been explained.

Asteroid selection

Comparison of delta-v requirements for standard Hohmann transfers

Mission	Δv
Earth surface to LEO	8.0 km/s
LEO to near-Earth asteroid	5.5 km/s[note 1]
LEO to lunar surface	6.3 km/s
LEO to moons of Mars	8.0 km/s

An important factor to consider in target selection is orbital economics, in particular the change in velocity (Δv) and travel time to and from the target. More of the extracted native material must be expended as propellant in higher Δv trajectories, thus less returned as payload. Direct Hohmann trajectories are faster than Hohmann trajectories assisted by planetary and/or lunar flybys, which in turn are faster than those of the Interplanetary Transport Network, but the reduction in transfer time comes at the cost of increased Δv requirements.

The Easily Recoverable Object (ERO) subclass of Near-Earth asteroids are considered likely candidates for early mining activity. Their low Δv makes them suitable for use in extracting construction materials for near-Earth space-based facilities, greatly reducing the economic cost of transporting supplies into Earth orbit.^[21]

The table above shows a comparison of Δv requirements for various missions. In terms of propulsion energy requirements, a mission to a near-Earth asteroid compares favorably to alternative mining missions.

An example of a potential target^[22] for an early asteroid mining expedition is 4660 Nereus, expected to be mainly enstatite. This body has a very low Δv compared to lifting materials from the surface of the Moon. However it would require a much longer round-trip to return the material.

Multiple types of asteroids have been identified but the three main types would include the C-type, S-type, and M-type asteroids:

1. C-type asteroids have a high abundance of water which is not currently of use for mining but could be used in an exploration effort beyond the asteroid. Mission costs could be reduced by using the available water from the asteroid. C-type asteroids also have a lot of organic carbon, phosphorus, and other key ingredients for fertilizer which could be used to grow food.^[23]
2. S-type asteroids carry little water but look more attractive because they contain numerous metals including: nickel, cobalt and more valuable metals such as gold, platinum and rhodium. A small 10-meter S-type asteroid contains about 650,000 kg (1,433,000 lb) of metal with 50 kg (110 lb) in the form of rare metals like platinum and gold.^[23]
3. M-type asteroids are rare but contain up to 10 times more metal than S-types^[23]

A class of easily recoverable objects (EROs) was identified by a group of researchers in 2013.
Twelve asteroids made up the initially identified group, all of which could be potentially mined with present-day rocket technology. Of 9,000 asteroids searched in the NEO database, these twelve could all be brought into an Earth-accessible orbit by changing their velocity by less than 500 meters per second (1,800 km/h; 1,100 mph). The dozen asteroids range in size from 2 to 20 meters (10 to 70 ft).^[24]

Asteroid cataloging

The B612 Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation with headquarters in the United States, dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes. As a non-governmental organization it has conducted two lines of related research to help detect asteroids that could one day strike Earth, and find the technological means to divert their path to avoid such collisions.
The foundation's 2013 goal was to design and build a privately financed asteroid-finding space telescope, Sentinel, hoping in 2013 to launch it in 2017–2018. The Sentinel's infrared telescope, once parked in an orbit similar to that of Venus, is designed to help identify threatening asteroids by cataloging 90% of those with diameters larger than 140 metres (460 ft), as well as surveying smaller Solar System objects.^{[25][26][27][needs update]}

Data gathered by Sentinel was intended to be provided through an existing scientific data-sharing network that includes NASA and academic institutions such as the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Given the satellite's telescopic accuracy, Sentinel's data may prove valuable for other possible future missions, such as asteroid mining.^[26][27][28]

Mining considerations

There are three options for mining:^[21]

1. Bring raw asteroidal material to Earth for use.
2. Process it on-site to bring back only processed materials, and perhaps produce propellant for the return trip.
3. Transport the asteroid to a safe orbit around the Moon, Earth or to the ISS.^[11] This can hypothetically allow for most materials to be used and not wasted.^[8] Along these lines, NASA has proposed a potential future space mission known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, although the primary focus of this mission is on retrieval. The House of Representatives deleted a line item for the ARP budget from NASA's FY 2017 budget request.^{[citation needed]}

Processing in situ for the purpose of extracting high-value minerals will reduce the energy requirements for transporting the materials, although the processing facilities must first be transported to the mining site. In situ mining will involve drilling boreholes and injecting hot fluid/gas and allow the useful material to react or melt with the solvent and the extract the solute. Due to the weak gravitational fields of asteroids, any drilling will cause large disturbances and form dust clouds.

Mining operations require special equipment to handle the extraction and processing of ore in outer space.^[21] The machinery will need to be anchored to the body,^{[citation needed]} but once in place, the ore can be moved about more readily due to the lack of gravity. However, no techniques for refining ore in zero gravity currently exist. Docking with an asteroid might be performed using a harpoon-like process, where a projectile would penetrate the surface to serve as an anchor; then an attached cable would be used to winch the vehicle to the surface, if the asteroid is both penetrable and rigid enough for a harpoon to be effective.^[29]

Due to the distance from Earth to an asteroid selected for mining, the round-trip time for communications will be several minutes or more, except during occasional close approaches to Earth by near-Earth asteroids. Thus any mining equipment will either need to be highly automated, or a human presence will be needed nearby.^[21] Humans would also be useful for troubleshooting problems and for maintaining the equipment. On the other hand, multi-minute communications delays have not prevented the success of robotic exploration of Mars, and automated systems would be much less expensive to build and deploy.^[30]

Technology being developed by Planetary Resources to locate and harvest these asteroids has resulted in the plans for three different types of satellites:

1. Arkyd Series 100 (the Leo Space telescope) is a less expensive instrument that will be used to find, analyze, and see what resources are available on nearby asteroids.^[23]
2. Arkyd Series 200 (the Interceptor) Satellite that would actually land on the asteroid to get a closer analysis of the available resources.^[23]
3. Arkyd Series 300 (Rendezvous Prospector) Satellite developed for research and finding resources deeper in space.^[23]

Technology being developed by Deep Space Industries to examine, sample, and harvest asteroids is divided into three families of spacecraft:

1. FireFlies are triplets of nearly identical spacecraft in CubeSat form launched to different asteroids to rendezvous and examine them.^[31]
2. DragonFlies also are launched in waves of three nearly identical spacecraft to gather small samples (5–10 kg) and return them to Earth for analysis.^[31]
3. Harvestors voyage out to asteroids to gather hundreds of tons of material for return to high Earth orbit for processing.^[32]

Asteroid mining could potentially revolutionize space exploration. The C-type asteroids's high abundance of water could be used to produce fuel by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. This would make space travel a more feasible option by lowering cost of fuel. While the cost of fuel is a relatively insignificant factor in the overall cost for low earth orbit manned space missions, storing it and the size of the craft become a much bigger factor for interplanetary missions. Typically 1 kg in orbit is equivalent to more than 10 kg on the ground (for a Falcon 9 1.0 it would need 250 tons of fuel to put 5 tons in GEO orbit or 10 tons in LEO). This limitation is a major factor in the difficulty of interplanetary missions as fuel becomes payload.

Extraction techniques

Surface mining

On some types of asteroids, material may be scraped off the surface using a scoop or auger, or for larger pieces, an "active grab."^[21] There is strong evidence that many asteroids consist of rubble piles,^[33] making this approach possible.

Shaft mining

A mine can be dug into the asteroid, and the material extracted through the shaft. This requires precise knowledge to engineer accuracy of astro-location under the surface regolith and a transportation system to carry the desired ore to the processing facility.

Magnetic rakes

Asteroids with a high metal content may be covered in loose grains that can be gathered by means of a magnet.^[21][34]

Heating

For asteroids such as carbonaceous chondrites that contain hydrated minerals, water and other volatiles can be extracted simply by heating. A water extraction test in 2016^[35] by Honeybee Robotics used asteroid regolith simulant^[36] developed by Deep Space Industries and the University of Central Florida to match the bulk mineralogy of a particular carbonaceous meteorite. Although the simulant was physically dry (i.e., it contained no water molecules adsorbed in the matrix of the rocky material), heating to about 510 °C released hydroxyl, which came out as substantial amounts of water vapor from the molecular structure of phyllosilicate clays and sulphur compounds. The vapor was condensed into liquid water filling the collection containers, demonstrating the feasibility of mining water from certain classes of physically dry asteroids.^{[citation needed]}

For volatile materials in extinct comets, heat can be used to melt and vaporize the matrix.^[21][37]

Extraction using the Mond process

The nickel and iron of an iron rich asteroid could be extracted by the Mond process. This involves passing carbon monoxide over the asteroid at a temperature between 50 and 60 °C for nickel, higher for iron, and with high pressures and enclosed in materials that are resistant to the corrosive carbonyls. This forms the gases nickel tetracarbonyl and iron pentacarbonyl - then nickel and iron can be removed from the gas again at higher temperatures, perhaps in an attached printer, and platinum, gold etc. left as a residue.^[38][39][40]

Self-replicating machines

A 1980 NASA study entitled Advanced Automation for Space Missions proposed a complex automated factory on the Moon that would work over several years to build 80% of a copy of itself, the other 20% being imported from Earth since those more complex parts (like computer chips) would require a vastly larger supply chain to produce.^[41] Exponential growth of factories over many years could refine large amounts of lunar (or asteroidal) regolith. Since 1980 there has been major progress in miniaturization, nanotechnology, materials science, and additive manufacturing, so it may be possible to achieve 100% "closure" with a reasonably small mass of hardware, although these technology advancements are themselves enabled on Earth by expansion of the supply chain so it needs further study. A NASA study in 2012 proposed a "bootstrapping" approach to establish an in-space supply chain with 100% closure, suggesting it could be achieved in only two to four decades with low annual cost.^[42] A study in 2016 again claimed it is possible to complete in just a few decades because of ongoing advances in robotics, and it argued it will provide benefits back to the Earth including economic growth, environmental protection, and provision of clean energy while also providing humanity protection against existential threats.^[43]

Proposed mining projects

On April 24, 2012 a plan was announced by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources. The company is called Planetary Resources and its founders include aerospace entrepreneurs Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis. Advisers include film director and explorer James Cameron and investors include Google's chief executive Larry Page and its executive chairman Eric Schmidt.^[16][44] They also plan to create a fuel depot in space by 2020 by using water from asteroids, splitting it to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft.^[16] The plan has been met with skepticism by some scientists, who do not see it as cost-effective, even though platinum is worth £22 per gram and gold nearly £31 per gram (approximately £961 per troy ounce).^[when?] Platinum and gold are raw materials traded on terrestrial markets, and it is impossible to predict what prices either will command at the point in the future when resources from asteroids become available. For example, platinum traditionally is very valuable due to its use in both industrial and jewelry applications, but should future technologies make the internal combustion engine obsolete, the demand for platinum's use as the catalyst in catalytic converters may well decline and decrease the metal's long term demand. The ongoing NASA mission OSIRIS-REx, which is planned to return just a minimal amount (60 g; two ounces) of material but could get up to 2 kg from an asteroid to Earth, will cost about US$1 billion.^[16][45]

Planetary Resources says that, in order to be successful, it will need to develop technologies that bring the cost of space flight down. Planetary Resources also expects that the construction of "space infrastructure" will help to reduce long-term running costs. For example, fuel costs can be reduced by extracting water from asteroids and splitting to hydrogen using solar energy. In theory, hydrogen fuel mined from asteroids costs significantly less than fuel from Earth due to high costs of escaping Earth's gravity. If successful, investment in "space infrastructure" and economies of scale could reduce operational costs to levels significantly below NASA's ongoing (OSIRIS-REx) mission.This investment would have to be amortized through the sale of commodities, delaying any return to investors. There are also some indications that Planetary Resources expects government to fund infrastructure development, as was exemplified by its recent request for $700,000 from NASA to fund the first of the telescopes described above.

Another similar venture, called Deep Space Industries, was started by David Gump, who had founded other space companies.^[47] The company hoped to begin prospecting for asteroids suitable for mining by 2015 and by 2016 return asteroid samples to Earth.^[48] By 2023 Deep Space Industries plans to begin mining asteroids.^[49]

At ISDC-San Diego 2013,^[50] Kepler Energy and Space Engineering (KESE,llc) also announced it was going to mine asteroids, using a simpler, more straightforward approach: KESE plans to use almost exclusively existing guidance, navigation and anchoring technologies from mostly successful missions like the Rosetta/Philae, Dawn, and Hyabusa's Muses-C and current NASA Technology Transfer tooling to build and send a 4-module Automated Mining System (AMS) to a small asteroid with a simple digging tool to collect ~40 tons of asteroid regolith and bring each of the four return modules back to low Earth orbit (LEO) by the end of the decade. Small asteroids are expected to be loose piles of rubble, therefore providing for easy extraction.

In September 2012, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) announced the Robotic Asteroid Prospector project, which will examine and evaluate the feasibility of asteroid mining in terms of means, methods, and systems.^[51]

Being the largest body in the asteroid belt, Ceres could become the main base and transport hub for future asteroid mining infrastructure,^[52] allowing mineral resources to be transported to Mars, the Moon, and Earth. Because of its small escape velocity combined with large amounts of water ice, it also could serve as a source of water, fuel, and oxygen for ships going through and beyond the asteroid belt.^[52] Transportation from Mars or the Moon to Ceres would be even more energy-efficient than transportation from Earth to the Moon.^[53]

Companies and organizations

Organizations which are working on asteroid mining include the following:

Organisation	Type
Deep Space Industries	Private company
Planetary Resources	Private company
Moon Express	Private company
Kleos Space	Private company
TransAstra	Private company
Aten Engineering	Private company
OffWorld	Private company
SpaceFab.US	Private company
Asteroid Mining Corporation Ltd. UK[54]	Private company

Potential targets

According to the Asterank database^[when?], the following asteroids are considered the best targets for mining if maximum cost-effectiveness is to be achieved:^[55]
 

Asteroid	Est. Value (US$)	Est. Profit (US$)	Δv (km/s)	Composition
Ryugu	95 billion	35 billion	4.663	Nickel, iron, cobalt, water, nitrogen, hydrogen, ammonia
1989 ML	14 billion	4 billion	4.888	Nickel, iron, cobalt
Nereus	5 billion	1 billion	4.986	Nickel, iron, cobalt
Didymos	84 billion	22 billion	5.162	Nickel, iron, cobalt
2011 UW158	8 billion	2 billion	5.187	Platinum, nickel, iron, cobalt
Anteros	5570 billion	1250 billion	5.439	Magnesium silicate, aluminum, iron silicate
2001 CC21	147 billion	30 billion	5.636	Magnesium silicate, aluminum, iron silicate
1992 TC	84 billion	17 billion	5.647	Nickel, iron, cobalt
2001 SG10	4 billion	0.6 billion	5.880	Nickel, iron, cobalt
2002 DO3	0.3 billion	0.06 billion	5.894	Nickel, iron, cobalt

Economics

Currently, the quality of the ore and the consequent cost and mass of equipment required to extract it are unknown and can only be speculated. Some economic analyses indicate that the cost of returning asteroidal materials to Earth far outweighs their market value, and that asteroid mining will not attract private investment at current commodity prices and space transportation costs.^[56][57] Other studies suggest large profit by using solar power.^[58][59] Potential markets for materials can be identified and profit generated if extraction cost is brought down. For example, the delivery of multiple tonnes of water to low Earth orbit for rocket fuel preparation for space tourism could generate a significant profit if space tourism itself proves profitable, which has not been proven.^[60]

In 1997 it was speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mi) contains more than US$20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals.^[10][61] A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km (0.62 mi) could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron–nickel ore,^[62] or two to three times the world production of 2004.^[63] The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×10¹⁹ kg of nickel–iron, which could supply the world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also be precious metals.

Not all mined materials from asteroids would be cost-effective, especially for the potential return of economic amounts of material to Earth. For potential return to Earth, platinum is considered very rare in terrestrial geologic formations and therefore is potentially worth bringing some quantity for terrestrial use. Nickel, on the other hand, is quite abundant and being mined in many terrestrial locations, so the high cost of asteroid mining may not make it economically viable.^[64]

Although Planetary Resources indicated in 2012 that the platinum from a 30-meter-long (98 ft) asteroid could be worth US$25–50 billion,^[65] an economist remarked any outside source of precious metals could lower prices sufficiently to possibly doom the venture by rapidly increasing the available supply of such metals.^[66]

Development of an infrastructure for altering asteroid orbits could offer a large return on investment.^[67]

Scarcity

Scarcity is a fundamental economic problem of humans having seemingly unlimited wants in a world of limited resources. Since Earth's resources are not infinite, the relative abundance of asteroidal ore gives asteroid mining the potential to provide nearly unlimited resources, which would essentially eliminate scarcity for those materials.
The idea of exhausting resources is not new. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote, because resources are ultimately limited, the exponential growth in a population would result in falls in income per capita until poverty and starvation would result as a constricting factor on population.^[68] It should be noted that Malthus posited this 220 years ago, and no sign has yet emerged of the Malthus effect regarding raw materials.

• Proven reserves are deposits of mineral resources that are already discovered and known to be economically extractable under present or similar demand, price and other economic and technological conditions.^[68]
• Conditional reserves are discovered deposits that are not yet economically viable.^{[citation needed]}
• Indicated reserves are less intensively measured deposits whose data is derived from surveys and geological projections. Hypothetical reserves and speculative resources make up this group of reserves.
• Inferred reserves are deposits that have been located but not yet exploited.^[68]

Continued development in asteroid mining techniques and technology will help to increase mineral discoveries.^[69] As the cost of extracting mineral resources, especially platinum group metals, on Earth rises, the cost of extracting the same resources from celestial bodies declines due to technological innovations around space exploration.^[68] However, it should be noted that the "substitution effect", i.e. the use of other materials for the functions now performed by platinum, would increase in strength as the cost of platinum increased. New supplies would also come to market in the form of jewelry and recycled electronic equipment from itinerant "we buy platinum" businesses like the "we buy gold" businesses that exist now.

As of September 2016, there are 711 known asteroids with a value exceeding US$100 trillion.^[55]

Financial feasibility

Space ventures are high-risk, with long lead times and heavy capital investment, and that is no different for asteroid-mining projects. These types of ventures could be funded through private investment or through government investment. For a commercial venture it can be profitable as long as the revenue earned is greater than total costs (costs for extraction and costs for marketing).^[70] The costs involving an asteroid-mining venture have been estimated to be around US$100 billion in 1996.^[70]

There are six categories of cost considered for an asteroid mining venture:^[70]

1. Research and development costs
2. Exploration and prospecting costs
3. Construction and infrastructure development costs
4. Operational and engineering costs
5. Environmental costs
6. Time cost

Determining financial feasibility is best represented through net present value.^[70] One requirement needed for financial feasibility is a high return on investments estimating around 30%.^[70] Example calculation assumes for simplicity that the only valuable material on asteroids is platinum. On August 16, 2016 platinum was valued at $1157 per ounce or $37,000 per kilogram. At a price of $1,340, for a 10% return on investment, 173,400 kg (5,575,000 ozt) of platinum would have to be extracted for every 1,155,000 tons of asteroid ore. For a 50% return on investment 1,703,000 kg (54,750,000 ozt) of platinum would have to be extracted for every 11,350,000 tons of asteroid ore. This analysis assumes that doubling the supply of platinum to the market (5.13 million ounces in 2014) would have no effect on the price of platinum. A more realistic assumption is that increasing the supply by this amount would reduce the price 30–50%.^{[citation needed]}

Decreases in the price of space access matter. The start of operational use of the low-cost-per-kilogram-in-orbit Falcon Heavy launch vehicle in 2018 is projected by astronomer Martin Elvis to have increased the extent of economically-minable near-Earth asteroids from hundreds to thousands. With the increased availability of several kilometers per second of delta-v that Falcon Heavy provides, it increases the number of NEAs accessible from 3 percent to around 45 percent.^[71]

Regulation and safety

Space law involves a specific set of international treaties, along with national statutory laws. The system and framework for international and domestic laws have emerged in part through the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.^[72] The rules, terms and agreements that space law authorities consider to be part of the active body of international space law are the five international space treaties and five UN declarations. Approximately 100 nations and institutions were involved in negotiations. The space treaties cover many major issues such as arms control, non-appropriation of space, freedom of exploration, liability for damages, safety and rescue of astronauts and spacecraft, prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, notification and registration of space activities, and the settlement of disputes. In exchange for assurances from the space power, the nonspacefaring nations acquiesced to U.S. and Soviet proposals to treat outer space as a commons (res communis) territory which belonged to no one state.

Asteroid mining in particular is covered by both international treaties—for example, the Outer Space Treaty—and national statutory laws—for example, specific legislative acts in the United States^[73] and Luxembourg.^[74]

Varying degrees of criticism exist regarding international space law. Some critics accept the Outer Space Treaty, but reject the Moon Agreement. Therefore, it is important to note that even the Moon Agreement with its common heritage of mankind clause, allows space mining, extraction, private property rights and exclusive ownership rights over natural outer space resources, if removed from their natural place. The Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Agreement allow private property rights for outer space natural resources once removed from the surface, subsurface or subsoil of the moon and other celestial bodies in outer space. Thus, international space law is capable of managing newly emerging space mining activities, private space transportation, commercial spaceports and commercial space stations/habitats/settlements. Space mining involving the extraction and removal of natural resources from their natural location is without question allowable under the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Agreement. Once removed, those natural resources can be reduced to possession, sold, traded and explored or used for scientific purposes. International space law allows space mining, specifically the extraction of natural resources. It is generally understood within the space law authorities that extracting space resources is allowable, even by private companies for profit. However, international space law prohibits property rights over territories and outer space land.

Astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Steven J. Ostro raised the concern altering the trajectories of asteroids near Earth might pose a collision hazard threat. They concluded that orbit engineering has both opportunities and dangers: if controls instituted on orbit-manipulation technology were too tight, future spacefaring could be hampered, but if they were too loose, human civilization would be at risk.^[67][75][76]

The Outer Space Treaty

After ten years of negotiations between nearly 100 nations, the Outer Space Treaty opened for signature on January 27, 1966. It entered into force as the constitution for outer space on October 10, 1967. The Outer Space Treaty was well received; it was ratified by ninety-six nations and signed by an additional twenty-seven states. The outcome has been that the basic foundation of international space law consists of five (arguably four) international space treaties, along with various written resolutions and declarations. The main international treaty is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967; it is generally viewed as the "Constitution" for outer space. By ratifying the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ninety-eight nations agreed that outer space would belong to the "province of mankind", that all nations would have the freedom to "use" and "explore" outer space, and that both these provisions must be done in a way to "benefit all mankind". The province of mankind principle and the other key terms have not yet been specifically defined (Jasentuliyana, 1992). Critics have complained that the Outer Space Treaty is vague. Yet, international space law has worked well and has served space commercial industries and interests for many decades. The taking away and extraction of Moon rocks, for example, has been treated as being legally permissible.
The framers of Outer Space Treaty initially focused on solidifying broad terms first, with the intent to create more specific legal provisions later (Griffin, 1981: 733–734). This is why the members of the COPUOS later expanded the Outer Space Treaty norms by articulating more specific understandings which are found in the "three supplemental agreements" – the Rescue and Return Agreement of 1968, the Liability Convention of 1973, and the Registration Convention of 1976 (734).

Hobe (2006) explains that the Outer Space Treaty "explicitly and implicitly prohibits only the acquisition of territorial property rights" – public or private, but extracting space resources is allowable.

The Moon Agreement

The Moon Agreement (1979–1984) is often treated^{[by whom?]} as though it is not a part of the body of international space law, and there has been extensive debate on whether or not the Moon Agreement is a valid part of international law. It entered into force in 1984, because of a five state ratification consensus procedure, agreed upon by the members of the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). Still today very few nations have signed and/or ratified the Moon Agreement. In recent years this figure has crept up to a few more than a dozen nations who have signed and ratified the treaty. The other three outer space treaties experienced a high level of international cooperation in terms of signage and ratification, but the Moon Treaty went further than them, by defining the Common Heritage concept in more detail and by imposing specific obligations on the parties engaged in the exploration and/or exploitation of outer space. The Moon Treaty explicitly designates the Moon and its natural resources as part of the Common Heritage of Mankind.The Moon Agreement allows space mining, specifically the extraction of natural resources. The treaty specifically provides in Article 11, paragraph 3 that:

Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place [emphasis added], shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person. The placement of personnel, space vehicles, equipment, facilities, stations and installations on or below the surface of the Moon, including structures connected with its surface or subsurface, shall not create a right of ownership over the surface or the subsurface of the Moon or any areas thereof.

The objection to the treaty by the spacefaring nations is held to be the requirement that extracted resources (and the technology used to that end) must be shared with other nations. The similar regime in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is believed to impede the development of such industries on the seabed.^[77]

Legal regimes of some countries

Some nations are beginning to promulgate legal regimes for extraterrestrial resource extraction. For example, the United States "SPACE Act of 2015"—facilitating private development of space resources consistent with US international treaty obligations—passed the US House of Representatives in July 2015.^[78][79] In November 2015 it passed the United States Senate.^[80] On 25 November US-President Barack Obama signed the H.R.2262 – U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act into law.^[81] The law recognizes the right of U.S. citizens to own space resources they obtain and encourages the commercial exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids. According to the article § 51303 of the law:^[82]

A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States

In February 2016, the Government of Luxembourg announced that it would attempt to "jump-start an industrial sector to mine asteroid resources in space" by, among other things, creating a "legal framework" and regulatory incentives for companies involved in the industry.^[74][83] By June 2016, announced that it would "invest more than US$200 million in research, technology demonstration, and in the direct purchase of equity in companies relocating to Luxembourg."^[84] In 2017, it became the "first European country to pass a law conferring to companies the ownership of any resources they extract from space", and remained active in advancing space resource public policy in 2018.^[85]

Missions

Ongoing and planned

• Hayabusa 2 – ongoing JAXA asteroid sample return mission (arriving at the target in 2018)
• OSIRIS-REx – planned NASA asteroid sample return mission (launched in September 2016)
• Fobos-Grunt 2 – proposed Roskosmos sample return mission to Phobos (launch in 2024)

Completed

First successful missions by country:^[86]

Nation	Flyby	Orbit	Landing	Sample return
USA	ICE (1985)	NEAR (1997)	NEAR (2001)	Stardust (2006)
Japan	Suisei (1986)	Hayabusa (2005)	Hayabusa (2005)	Hayabusa (2010)
EU	ICE (1985)	Rosetta (2014)	Rosetta (2014)
Soviet Union	Vega 1 (1986)
China	Chang'e 2 (2012)

In fiction

The first mention of asteroid mining in science fiction is apparently Garrett P. Serviss' story Edison's Conquest of Mars, New York Evening Journal, 1898.^[87][88]
The 1979 film Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, is about the crew of the Nostromo, a commercially operated spaceship on a return trip to Earth hauling a refinery and 20 million tons of mineral ore mined from an asteroid.

C. J. Cherryh's novel, Heavy Time focuses on the plight of asteroid miners in the Alliance-Union universe, while Moon is a 2009 British science fiction drama film depicting a lunar facility that mines the alternative fuel helium-3 needed to provide energy on Earth. It was notable for its realism and drama, winning several awards internationally.^[89][90][91]

In several science fiction video games, asteroid mining is a possibility. For example, in the space-MMO, EVE Online, asteroid mining is a very popular career, owing to its simplicity.^[92][93][94]

In the computer game Star Citizen, the mining occupation supports a variety of dedicated specialists, each of which has a critical role to play in the effort.^[95]

In The Expanse series of novels, asteroid mining is a driving economic force behind the colonization of the solar system. Since huge energy input is required to escape planets' gravity, it is implied that once space-based mining platforms are established, it will be more efficient to harvest natural resources (water, oxygen, building materials, etc.) from asteroids rather than lifting them out of Earth's gravity well.^{[citation needed]}

Gallery

• 

  Artist's concept from the 1970s of asteroid mining
• 

  Artist's concept of an asteroid mining vehicle as seen in 1984
• 

  Artist's concept of an asteroid moved by a space tether
• 

  A future space telescope designed by Planetary Resources company to find asteroids