{"id":33164,"date":"2025-03-24T11:16:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T15:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=33164"},"modified":"2025-03-24T11:16:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T15:16:28","slug":"are-we-on-the-verge-of-mining-metals-from-the-asteroids-above-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=33164","title":{"rendered":"Are we on the verge of mining metals from the asteroids above Earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Are we on the verge of mining metals from the asteroids above Earth?<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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BBC, Josh Sims<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Getty
Asteroid mining firms say mining for minerals on asteroids is just around the corner now, but not everyone is convinced (Credit: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As an asteroid mining start-up’s latest mission goes awry, Josh Sims looks at how close we really are to extracting rare minerals from the many celestial bodies floating above us.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Thirty years ago the seminal BBC science programme Tomorrow’s World made a few predictions about how the world might be by 2025. It was a testament to how hard predicting the technological future is: we would, the programme suggested, have microchip implants to help us deal with ATMs, chat with holographic helpmates in our homes and there would be riots over internet access.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The episode\u00a0also suggested we would be mining asteroids<\/a>\u00a0by now. And while we aren’t there yet, it’s something that some start-ups argue will happen sooner than many imagined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The founder of the California-based company\u00a0AstroForge<\/a>\u00a0believes it will be the first to get there, and the company has already taken the first tentative steps. On 27 February 2025 it\u00a0launched its first\u00a0$6.5m (\u00a35.1m) unmanned spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Around nine days later, AstroForge believes the spacecraft \u2013\u00a0named Odin \u2013 likely passed beyond the Moon and into deep space as planned.<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, however, AstroForge developed major communications problems with Odin<\/a>, which it is still trying to rectify at the time of writing. The firm hopes Odin has now entered its nine-month long coast to its mission destination: a fly-by of the carefully pre-selected asteroid 2022 OB5, some eight million km (five million miles) from Earth, which Odin will assess the composition of using its sensors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Move fast and break rocks” might be the mantra of Matt Gialich, AstroForge’s ebullient founder with a penchant for swear words<\/a>, who is not dissuaded by the perhaps unresolvable technical trouble. AstroForge expected nothing less than many hurdles and has, he says, learned much even if contact isn’t made with this spacecraft again. “Yes, there are a lot more baby steps to take,” he concedes. “But we’re going to start to actually do it. You have to try.”<\/p>\n

READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are we on the verge of mining metals from the asteroids above Earth? https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20250320-how-close-are-we-really-to-mining-asteroids BBC, Josh Sims \u00a0 \u00a0 As an asteroid mining start-up’s latest mission goes awry, Josh Sims looks at how close we really are to extracting rare minerals from the many celestial bodies floating above us. Thirty years ago the seminal BBC … Continue reading Are we on the verge of mining metals from the asteroids above Earth?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[133],"tags":[1774],"class_list":["post-33164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy-news","tag-mining-asteroids"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33165,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33164\/revisions\/33165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}