THE NEXT GOLD RUSH?

There’s fabulous wealth in them thar space rocks

As well as telling us about our place in the Solar System, asteroids could also offer enormous commercial value. Several companies are already talking seriously about mining asteroids. The organic compounds and water in carbonaceous objects like Bennu and Ryugu could provide the raw materials needed for life-support systems in human exploration of the Solar System, and could even help to support long-term space colonies. Other asteroids are thought to be rich sources of precious metals.

Incredibly, a metallic asteroid a kilometre or two across could contain enough gold, platinum, tungsten and nickel to make it worth hundreds or even thousands of billions of dollars. So even considering the high costs

of space exploration, a company that can successfully extract these resources would still turn an astronomical profit.

The trick for future space mining will lie in identifying which near-Earth asteroids are economically viable to exploit, as well as how to reliably operate such deep-space missions. There are also huge uncertainties in how to mine rock in the vacuum and low-gravity of an asteroid surface. And those are just the technological challenges. There are concerns over the legal consequences of the commercial exploitation of space: the lack of adequate laws and regulation could lead to a new Wild West, with disputes over who has the right to mine which asteroids.