Asteroid Mining: the Race for Space Riches

Notional small asteroid retrieval probe [NASA].

David Szondy

NEWATLAS

There's gold in them thar asteroids – also iron, nickel, copper and, most valuable of all, water. According to the proponents of asteroid mining, these space rocks are a virtual El Dorado in the sky with more obtainable minerals in the largest three in our solar system than on the entire Earth. The question is, where exactly is all this mineral wealth and how do you get it without going broke in the process?

There's something of an international race to the asteroids underway at the moment, with countries from the United States to Luxembourg backing missions. On the surface it seems like a two-tier race – NASA and ESA are sending giant spacecraft and even manned missions, while private firms are concentrating on tiny probes that look like scale models. But while these approaches to asteroid exploration are very different, they are far from mutually exclusive.

Before we examine these exploration plans, let's look at the asteroids and why anyone would be interested in spending billions to visit a far flung rock.

View full article and Gallery, HERE.

General Bolden on the Moon

EDITORIAL : The Space Community experienced a minor brush fire late last week, set accidentally perhaps, by NASA administrator Charles Bolden and his reaction to the National Research Council's congressional-commissioned review of NASA’s "strategic vision."

It’s a sad fact of American politics that the release of the NRC report might have passed largely unnoticed had Bolden been as cryptic about the Moon’s place in NASA’s future as the rest of the administration has been from is beginning.

Instead he confirmed for us one line of reasoning into the administration’s actual rationale for erasing the Moon from National Space Policy, three years ago.

“I don’t know how to say it any more plainly,” Bolden said. “NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio, and we are not planning for one.”

He warned the next administration not to change course “again” back to the Moon. That would mean, he said, the U.S. would “never again see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration.”

“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission,” Bolden said. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” because “we can only do so many things, and NASA’s focus will remain on human missions to asteroids and Mars.”

“All that was 'a given,' three years ago,” Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan said afterward on Tuesday, perhaps forgetting along with General Bolden, that "going to the Moon as a primary project" has not been a goal of the American government since 1969, and this was never "a primary project" of the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004 or of those who recognize the Moon's strategic and scientific value and who still support restoring the Moon back into scientific context today.

On the surface there did seem little that was new in Bolden’s protests. All the superficial reasons for dropping the Moon as an intermediate objective on the way to Mars spread abroad by the administration and its supporters still make little sense. No one who seriously supported a return to the Moon as an essential objective on the way to Mars ever hoped simply to recreate Apollo. 

And if it’s asteroids you want, the Moon has been an asteroid magnet for about 4.575 billion years.

Aside from the glaring hole left by having had the Moon erased from National Space Policy, three years after the cancellation of Constellation, America's deep space efforts are really little different from what they were at the end of the Bush administration, with little actual progress having been made not already set in motion before President Obama's Inauguration.. 

Aside from the missing Altair lander, and the R&D required to build it, together with a simple recognition of the Moon’s clear strategic value in overcoming tremendous technological challenges facing any manned mission to Mars, very little has actually changed.

The end goal of landing astronauts on Mars, someday, some way, in budgetary “out years,” is still the same, as was retiring the Space Shuttle and planned development and use of commercial transportation to ISS. These were integral to the Vision for Space Exploration introduced in 2004. Though some seem determined to credit the administration with having dreamed up subsidized commercial space, and certainly for popularizing the idea, that too was integral to the VSE and as far as presidents go the initiative dates back to Ronald Reagan.

From a political perspective, with unwitting help from General Bolden, we no longer have to simply make educated guessed as to why the Moon was edited out of NASA’s strategy. As it turns out, it was not the “been there, done that” argument offered by the President, after all..

Bolden has finally confirmed for us one line of investigation into the mysterious missing Moon by simply telling us that the Obama administration just does not want the American government “to take the lead” on any manned return to the Moon.

Thus, it was a political decision, dressed up and oversold with some of the tired arguments originally heard forty years ago.

That's not a crime, of course. Thankfully Bolden has also communicated that the administration is not opposed to "leading from behind" on a manned mission to the Moon, perhaps lead by a different nation, nor does he rule out robotic exploration, though the nation has so far committed only to finishing or fulfilling the precursor robotic lunar missions that were either already underway or already long in the pipeline.

We are genuinely grateful the administration appears unwilling to stand in the way of any commercial manned or unmanned landings in the Moon.

But why this passionate and now very specfic opposition to America leading while exploring and using the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars and as a Rosetta Stone for the rest of the Solar System?

In light of all the other alterations made to the President's 'asteroid initiative' over the past three years, was the administration's unyielding position the original and still primary reason the whole Constellation program was cancelled?

The Moon, and those of us still urging policy makers to take another look at its advantages over manned asteroids exploration, are apparently occasionally being heard in the White House. In the past three years the administration has occasionally floated tantalizing trial balloons, future efforts involving the Moon, but specifically without any  human landing.

One thing is different in the past three years. The small flotilla of remote sensing spacecraft, from Japan, China and India, as well as the U.S. sent to the Moon, and inspired by the lead America had taken with in 2004, after a long national drought five American spacecraft in lunar orbit simultaneously for most of this past year, and planetary scientists have learned more about the Moon since 2004 than in the two decades previous.

This new look at the Moon has by now strongly confirmed the Moon's strategic importance and its usefulness to science, and as a logical support for future manned missions to Mars.

"Just after it has been relegated to a “been there, done that” status, the Moon again shows us we have a lot to learn about its history, physical state and the potential value of its resources. We must take the initiative to learn more as the Moon is crucial in developing and advancing a sustainable space faring infrastructure." -   Paul D. Spudis

Why then, like Arthur C. Clarke’s Europa, are American astronauts to “attempt no landing there?” If we are taking the lead going to Mars, our role in a return to the Moon along that path would seem to be irrelevant.

This much is clear. Leaving the Moon out as an intermediate goal, as a place where America already has a momentary and essential lead, is a stubbornly held position dear to the administration.From Bolden’s statements late last week one might think someone had suggested NASA’s strategy for building a path to Mars should be renamed back to “Constellation.”

Though only occasionally experienced, if America’s history and the nation's storied history of manned space exploration has succeeded in teaching us anything it has taught history has a very tight turning radius.

First, kill all the lawyers*

A low tech alternative to rail guns or explosive kinetics.

Paul D. Spudis

The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

There’s quite a buzz in space policy circles over the recent announcement of the creation of a new company that intends to survey, study and mine near Earth asteroids (NEAs).  Given my previous advocacy regarding the desirability of learning how to extract and use off-planet resources, many people have asked me to weigh in with my opinion of their proposed business plan.  I’d like to frame my remarks around Michael Listner’s recent piece on the possible legal issues involved in the plan as he has illuminated an interesting angle on the project.

The roll-out of the business plan of Planetary Resources Inc. made a big media splash, as is typical for many of these “New Space” private operations.  Close examination reveals the outline of a plan, but the technical details are rather fuzzy.  Given that no business should reveal too much detail about their plans lest they lose their competitive advantage, the company’s reticence is not too surprising.  To summarize it in broad terms, the plan is to launch a space-based telescope, dedicated to identifying candidate NEAs; at least initially, the main interest seems to be metal asteroids (presumably those rich in metallic elements of economic value, including gold and platinum) and water-bearing asteroids.  The former would have significant economic value in terrestrial markets, providing the possibility of high, near-term payback for investors.  The latter would have value for future in-space operations and could be sold to both national governments and to the private sector, presuming that such markets develop.

NEA 433 Eros [NASA].

The next step involves sending robotic prospectors to the best candidate bodies to survey them, determine their physical, chemical and mineralogical make up, and identify the best targets for resource extraction.  The last step involves snagging a small asteroid (possibly several tons in total mass) and tow it back to cislunar space where Earth-based, teleoperated robotic machines can process and refine the material for sale.  This last step contains the most open questions.  Although such a mission can be envisioned in principle, it is technically out of reach at the present time.  However, I envision no particular show stoppers here – practical details of the material processing and handling these materials in microgravity are the biggest unknowns, but even these issues can be addressed and mitigated before any NEA is retrieved through the execution of some carefully designed experiments in low Earth orbit.

But then what?  This – as always is the case when human endeavors begin in earnest – is where the lawyers come in.

Listner’s article suggests that the proposed activity of capturing and processing an asteroid falls outside the current bounds of any outer space legal regime.  He recalls that the terms of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (to which the United States is a signatory) prohibits claims of national sovereignty over extraterrestrial objects.  Space mining companies will be subject to the laws of the nation in which they are incorporated and thus, bound to the terms of any international treaty that nation has ratified.  While national ownership of outer space assets is prohibited by the 1967 treaty, the treaty is silent on private ownership.  Thus, the treaty is open to interpretation and subject to the philosophical and economic predilections of the parties involved.  One thing is certain however – if anyone ever does this, they are guaranteed to face protracted litigation that will no doubt take years (and many billable hours) to wind its way through the courts.

Listner goes on to describe issues with liability, mostly in relation to possible damages caused by future space operations or to existing space-based assets.  However, other more alarming scenarios are possible (e.g., suppose a retrieved NEA collides with the Earth during its arrival in cislunar space?)  Although no specific conclusions are drawn, the foreshadowing is a prerequisite for private companies to post a surety bond, one potentially of enormous scale.  If nothing else, such a requirement would certainly put a crimp in many new commercialization plans.

The infamous (at least in space circles) Moon Treaty is the last legal issue discussed by Listner.  In brief, this treaty prohibits private ownership of space bodies and demands that any profits from resource extraction from these bodies be “distributed” amongst the nations of the world.  This document was submitted to the United States Senate in 1980 for ratification and was defeated, thanks to a vigorous educational campaign by the L-5 Society.  Thus, thirty-two years ago, the United States (and also other major space faring nations, including Russia and China) rejected the Moon Treaty.  However, from the standpoint of most lawyers, the treaty has been ratified by 17 nations, giving it the full force of international law.  Considering the multinational make-up of many companies and that their corporate assets can be frozen or in some extreme cases seized (sometimes for entirely specious or arbitrary reasons), the legal status of the use and ownership of extracted space resources must be considered seriously.

Where does this legal confusion leave the prospects for the economic development of the Solar System?  That is unclear at the moment.  In broad terms, business does not like legal uncertainty to a degree usually in direct proportion to the amount of money involved.  For both technical and legal reasons, it is highly unlikely that there will be a “gold rush in space.” The technical issues are substantial (particularly for the Planetary Resources Inc. plan) but the legal ones are no less so.  In part, this is why I favor making the determination of how to extract and use off-planet resources a central goal of the American civil space program.  Note well: I do not say that we should turn NASA into a space mining company.  Rather, the role of government is to undertake technically risky ventures with the aim of determining how difficult they might be and to settle any thorny legal issues that may arise.  Questions of international law can only be addressed and settled by national governments – through agreements, treaties, new law and if need be, by stronger actions.  No private sector corporation has this inherent ability – only national governments can resolve these issues.  If such issues are resolved, the private sector can then successfully proceed and grow their businesses and governments will profit too.

I applaud both the vision and the chutzpah of Planetary Resources Inc.  For now, their plan to launch and operate a space-based telescope to map asteroids and locate promising prospects is a good start.  They may even manage to eventually send a probe of two for a close-up examination of a couple of NEAs.  As for the last piece of their plan, at this writing, color me skeptical.

* Henry VI Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2.  Yes, I am aware lawyers claim that this phrase is taken out of context (i.e., it is actually an ironic assertion that if one wants a poorly run, bad society, eliminate the rule of law), but it is simply too good not to use here.

Originally published at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

Destination: Moon or Asteroid?

Lockheed-Martin's Plymouth Rock mission concept [Lockheed-Martin].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

Part I:  Operational Considerations

The current controversy over the direction of our national space program has many dimensions but most of the discourse has focused on the means (government vs. commercial launch vehicles) not the ends (destinations and activities).  Near-Earth objects (NEO, i.e., asteroids) became the next destination for human exploration as an alternative to the Moon when the Augustine committee advocated a “flexible path” in their 2009 report.  The reason for going to an asteroid instead of the Moon was that it costs too much money to develop a lunar lander whereas asteroids, having extremely low surface gravity, don’t require one.  The administration embraced and supported this change in direction and since then, the agency has been studying possible NEO missions and how to conduct them.

On the surface, it might seem that NEO missions answer the requirements for future human destinations.  NEOs are beyond low Earth orbit, they require long transit times and so simulate the duration of future Mars missions, and (wait for it)… we’ve never visited one with people.  However, detailed consideration indicates that NEOs are not the best choice as our next destination in space.  In this post and two additional ones to come, I will consider some of the operational, scientific and resource utilization issues that arise in planning NEO missions and exploration activities and compare them to the lunar alternative.

Most asteroids reside not near the Earth but in a zone between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt.  The very strong gravity field of Jupiter will sometimes perturb the orbits of these rocky bodies and hurl them into the inner Solar System, where they usually hit the Sun or one of the inner planets.  Between those two events, they orbit the Sun, sometimes coming close to the Earth.  Such asteroids are called near-Earth objects and can be any of a variety of different types of asteroids.  Typically, they are small, on the order of tens of meters to a few kilometers in size.  As such, they do not have significant gravity fields of their own, so missions to them do not “land” on an alien world, but rather rendezvous and station-keep with it in deep space.  Think “formation flying” with the International Space Station (ISS) without the option to dock.

The moniker “near Earth” is a relative descriptor.  These objects orbit the Sun just as the Earth does and vary in distance to the Earth from a few million km to hundreds of millions of km, depending upon the time of year.  Getting to one has nothing to do with getting to another, so multiple NEO destinations in one trip are unlikely.  Because the distance to a NEO varies widely, we cannot just go to one whenever we choose – launch windows open at certain times of the year and because the NEO is in its own orbit, these windows occur infrequently and are of very short duration, usually a few days.  Moreover, due to the distances between Earth and the NEO, radio communications will not be instantaneous, with varying time-lags of tens of seconds to several minutes between transmission and reception.  Thus, the crew must be autonomous during operations.

Although there are several thousand NEOs, few of them are possible destinations for human missions.  This is a consequence of two factors.  First, space is very big and even several thousand rocks spread out over several billion cubic kilometers of empty space results in a very low density of objects.  Second, many of these objects are unreachable, requiring too much velocity change (“delta-v”) from an Earth departure stage; this can be a result of either too high of an orbital inclination (out of the plane of the Earth’s orbit) or an orbit that is too eccentric (all orbits are elliptical).  These factors result in reducing the field of possible destinations from thousands to a dozen or so at best.  Moreover, the few NEOs that can be reached are all very small, from a few meters to perhaps a km or two in size.  Not much exploratory area there, especially after a months-long trip in deep space.

That’s another consideration – transit time.  Not only are there few targets, it takes months to reach one of them.  Long transit time is sold as a benefit by asteroid advocates:  because a trip to Mars will take months, a NEO mission will allow us to test out the systems for Mars missions.  But such systems do not yet exist.  On a human mission to a NEO, the crew is beyond help from Earth, except for radioed instructions and sympathy.  A human NEO mission will have to be self-sufficient to a degree that does not now exist.  Parts on the ISS fail all the time, but because it is only 400 km above the Earth, it is relatively straightforward to send replacement parts up on the next supply mission (unless your supply fleet is grounded, as currently it has been).  On a NEO mission, a broken system must be both fixable and fixed by the crew.  Even seemingly annoying malfunctions can become critical.  As ISS astronaut Don Pettit puts it, “If your toilet breaks, you’re dead.”

Crew exposure is another consequence of long flight times, in this case to the radiation environment of interplanetary space.  This hazard comes in two flavors – solar flares and galactic cosmic rays.  Solar flares are massive eruptions of high-energy particles from the Sun, occurring at irregular intervals.  We must carry some type of high-mass shielding to protect the crew from this deadly radiation.  Because we cannot predict when a flare might occur, this massive solar “storm shelter” must be carried wherever we go in the Solar System (because Apollo missions were only a few days long, the crew simply accepted the risk of possible death from a solar flare).  Cosmic rays are much less intense, but constant.  The normal ones are relatively harmless, but high-energy versions (heavy nuclei from ancient supernovae) can cause serious tissue damage.  Although crew can be partly shielded from this hazard, they are never totally protected from it.  Astronauts in low Earth orbit are largely protected from radiation because they orbit beneath the van Allen radiation belts, which protect life on the Earth.  On the Moon, we can use regolith to shield crew but for now, such mass is not available to astronauts traveling in deep space.

When the crew finally arrives at their destination, more difficulties await.  Most NEOs spin very rapidly, with rotation periods on the order of a few hours at most.  This means that the object is approachable only near its polar area.  But because these rocks are irregularly shaped, rotation is not the smooth, regular spin of a planet, but more like that of a wobbling toy top.  If material is disturbed on the surface, the rapid spin of the asteroid will launch the debris into space, creating a possible collision hazard to the human vehicle and crew.  The lack of gravity means that “walking” on the surface of the asteroid is not possible; crew will “float” above the surface of the object and just as occurs in Earth orbit, each touch of the object (action) will result in a propulsive maneuver away from the surface (reaction).

We need to learn how to work quickly at the asteroid because we don’t have much time there.  Loiter times near the asteroid for most opportunities are on the order of a few days.  Why so short?  Because the crew wants to be able to come home.  Both NEO and Earth continue to orbit the Sun and we need to make sure that the Earth is in the right place when we arrive back at its orbit.  So in effect, we will spend months traveling there, in a vehicle with the habitable volume of a large walk-in closet (OK, two walk-in closets maybe), a short time at the destination and then months for the trip home.  Is it worth it?  That will be the subject of my next post.

People at an asteroid: What will they do there? [Lockheed-Martin]

Part II:  Scientific Considerations

In my last post, I examined some of the operational considerations associated with a human mission to a near Earth asteroid and how it contrasted with the simpler, easier operations of lunar return.  Here, I want to consider what we might do at this destination by focusing on the scientific activities and possible return we could expect from such a mission.  Some of the operational constraints mentioned in the previous post will impact the scientific return we expect from a human NEO mission.

Asteroids are the left over debris from the formation of the Solar System.  Solid pieces of refractory (high melting temperature) elements and minerals that make up the rocky planets have their precursors in the asteroids.  We actually have many pieces of these objects now – as meteorites.  The rocks that fall from the sky are overwhelmingly from the small asteroids that orbit the Sun (the exception is that in meteorite collections, some come from larger bodies, including the Moon and Mars).

Moreover, we have flown by almost a dozen small bodies, orbited two, impacted one and “landed” on two others.  Thousands of images and spectra have been obtained for these rocky objects.  The chemical composition of the asteroids Eros and Vesta have been obtained remotely.  We have cataloged the craters, cracks, scarps, grooves and pits that make up the surface features of these objects.  We have seen that some are highly fragmental aggregates of smaller rocks, while others seem to be more solid and denser.  In addition to these spacecraft data, thousands of asteroids have been cataloged, mapped and spectrally characterized from telescopes on the Earth.  We have recognized the compositional variety, the various shapes, spin rates and orbits of these small planetoids.  We now know for certain that the most common type of meteorite (chondrite) is derived from the most spectrally common type of asteroid (S-type) as a result from the Hayabusa mission, the world’s first asteroid sample return.

Annotated rubble-strewn surface of Asteroid 25143-Itokawa. Circles outline debris-flow sources, arrows indicate debris flow channels, white/black circle indicates a possible hydrological sink. Talus accumulations can be seen between the two sets of arrows with southeasterly orientation on an arbitrary grid. Anastomosing shallow channels to right of the Muses-C fine debris area, outlined in white tone, may indicate release of meltwater from permafrost and emplacement of slope wash. Parabolic lines outline stone-banked lobe ridges. Two fairly recent impacts, judging from tonal contrast, are labelled A and B. IAG Geomorphology Working Group, Oct. 2009 [JAXA].

In short, we know quite a bit about the asteroids.  What new knowledge would we gain from a human mission to one?

Although we have (literally) tons of meteorites, extraterrestrial samples without geological context have much less scientific value than those collected from planetary units with regional extent and clear origins.  Many different processes have affected the surfaces of the planets and understanding the precise location and geological setting of a rock is essential to reconstructing the history and processes responsible for its formation and by inference, the history and processes of its host planet.

Most asteroids are made up of primitive, undifferentiated planetary matter.  They have been destroyed and re-assembled by collision and impact over the last 4.5 billion years of Solar System history.  The surface has been ground-up and fragmented by the creation of regolith and some details of this process remain poorly understood.  But in general terms, we pretty much know what asteroids are made of, how they are put together, and what processes operate upon their surfaces.  True enough, the details are not fully understood, but there is no reason to suspect that we are missing a major piece of the asteroid story.  In contrast, planetary bodies such as the Moon have whole epochs and processes that we are just now uncovering – in the case of the Moon, water has been recently found to be present inside, outside and in significant quantity at the poles, relations that have enormous implications for lunar history and about which we were nearly totally ignorant only a couple of years ago.

Most NEOs will be simple ordinary chondrites – we know this because ordinary chondrites make up about 85% of all meteorite falls (an observed fall of a rock from the sky).  This class of meteorite is remarkable, not for its diversity but for its uniformity.  Chondrites are used as a chemical standard in the analysis of planetary rocks and soils to measure the amounts of differentiation or chemical change during geological processing.  In themselves, chondrites do not vary (much) except that they show different degrees of heating subsequent to their formation, but not enough heating to significantly change their chemical composition.

This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Until the arrival of NASA's DAWN in orbit around Vesta, Lutetia (130 kilometers) was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft. Vesta dwarfs all other small bodies in this image with diameter of 530 km [NASA/JPL/ESA].

Some NEO asteroids are pieces of bigger objects that experienced chemical and mineral change or differentiation.  Vesta (not a NEO, but a main belt asteroid) has reflection spectra similar to known, evolved meteorites, the eucrite group.  These rocks suggest that some asteroids are small, differentiated planetoids, having volcanic activity that dates from the very beginning of Solar System history.  Moreover, since we have pieces of the Moon and Mars as meteorite fragments, some NEOs may consist of material blasted off these planets.  However, given that most NEOs are inaccessible to human missions, the likelihood that we could visit one of planetary derivation is small (curious that the most interesting of the NEOs appear to be those derived from some bigger (planet-sized) object.)  In broad terms of meteorite science, multiple small samples from a variety of asteroid types are preferable to many bigger samples of a single specimen, exactly the opposite of what a human mission will provide.

What specifically would a crew do during a NEO visit?  An astronaut on a planet typically would explore the surface, map geological relations where possible, collect representative samples of the units and rock types that can be discerned, and collect as much mapping and compositional data as possible to aid in the interpretation of the returned samples.  In the case of a NEO, many of these activities would not be particularly fruitful.  The asteroid is either a pile of rubble or a single huge boulder.  Chondritic meteorites are uniform in composition, so geological setting is not particularly instructive.  We do have questions about the processes of space weathering, the changes that occur in rocks as a result of their exposure to space for varying lengths of time.   Such questions could be addressed by a simple robotic sample collector, as the recently approved OSIRIS mission plans to do.

One question that could be addressed by human visitors to asteroids is their internal make-up and structure.  Some appear to be rubble piles while others are nearly solid – why such different fates in different asteroids?  By using active seismometry (acoustic sounding), a human crew could lay out instruments and sensors to decipher the density profile of an asteroid.  Understanding the internal structure of an asteroid is important for learning how strong such objects are; this could be an important factor in devising mitigation strategies in case we ever have to divert a NEO away from a collision trajectory with the Earth.  As mentioned in my preceding post, the crew had better work quickly – loiter times at the asteroid will probably be short, on the order of a few days at most.

Although we can explore asteroids with human missions, it seems likely that few significant insights into the origins and processes of the early Solar System will result from such exploration.  Such study is already a very active field, using the samples that nature has provided us – the meteorites.  Sample collection from an asteroid will yield more samples of meteorites, only without the melted fusion crusts that passage through the Earth’s atmosphere creates.  In other words, from this mission, scientific progress will be incremental, not revolutionary.

In contrast, because they yield information on geological histories and processes at planet-wide scales, sample collection and return from a large planetary body such as the Moon or Mars could revolutionize our knowledge of these objects in particular and the Solar System in general.  Many years prior to the Moon missions, we had meteorites that showed impact metamorphic effects but the idea of impact-caused mass extinctions of life on Earth only came after we had fully comprehended the impact process recorded in the Apollo samples from the Moon.  The significance of impact-related mineral and chemical features were not appreciated until we had collected samples with geological context to understand what the lunar samples were telling us.

Of course, science being unpredictable, some major surprise that could revolutionize our knowledge may await us on some distant asteroid.  But such surprises doubtless await us in many places throughout the Solar System and the best way to assure ourselves that we will eventually find them is to develop the capability to go anywhere in space at any time.  That means developing and using the resources of space to create new capabilities.  I will consider that in my next post.

SEV, the Space Exploration Vehicle variant on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) originally developed as part of the Constellation program [NASA].

In Part I and Part II of this series, I examined some of the operational and scientific issues associated with a human mission to a near Earth asteroid (NEO) and contrasted them with the simpler operations and greater scientific return of a mission to the Moon.  To continue the discussion of what we might do at an asteroid, I will now consider using the local resources offered by asteroids, how they differ from those of the Moon, and offer some practical considerations on accessing and using them.

To become a truly space faring species, humanity must learn how to use what we find in space to survive and thrive.  Tied to the logistics chain of the Earth, we are now and always will be limited in space capability.  Our ultimate goal in space is to develop the capability to go anywhere at any time and conduct any mission we can imagine.  Such capability is unthinkable without being able to obtain provisions from resources found off-planet.  That means developing and using the resources of space to create new capabilities.

One of the alleged benefits of asteroid destinations is that they are rich in resource potential.  I would agree, putting the accent on the word “potential.”  Our best guide to the nature of these resources comes from the study of meteorites, which are derived from near Earth asteroids.  They have several compositions, the most common being the ordinary chondrite, which makes up about 85% of observed meteorite falls.  Ordinary chondrites are basically rocks, rich in the elements silicon, iron, magnesium, calcium and aluminum.  They contain abundant metal grains, composed mostly of iron and nickel, widely dispersed throughout the rock.

The resource potential of asteroids lies not in these objects, but in the minority of asteroids that have more exotic compositions.  Metal asteroids make up about 7% of the population and are composed of nearly pure iron-nickel metal, with some inclusions of rock-like material as a minor component.  Other siderophile (iron-loving) elements including platinum and gold make up trace portions of these bodies.  A metal asteroid is an extremely high-grade ore deposit and potentially could be worth billions of dollars if we were able to get these metals back to Earth, although one should be mindful of the possible catastrophic effects on existing precious metal markets – so much gold was produced during the 1849 California Gold Rush that the world market price of gold decreased by a factor of sixteen.

From the spaceflight perspective, water has the most value.  Another type of relatively rare asteroid is also a chondrite, but a special type that contains carbon and organic compounds as well as clays and other hydrated minerals.  These bodies contain significant amounts of water.  Water is one of the most useful substances in space – it supports human life (to drink, to use as radiation shielding, and to breath when cracked into its component hydrogen and oxygen), it can be used as a medium of energy storage (fuel cells) and it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known.  Finding and using a water-rich NEO would create a logistics depot of immense value.

A key advantage of asteroids for resources is a drawback as an operational environment – they have extremely low surface gravity.  Getting into and out of the Moon’s gravity well requires a change in velocity of about 2380 m/s (both ways); to do the same for a typical asteroid requires only a few meters per second.  This means that a payload launched from an asteroid rather than the Moon saves almost 5 km/s in delta-v, a substantial amount of energy.  So from the perspective of energy, the asteroids beat the Moon as a source of materials.

There are, however, some difficulties in mining and using asteroidal material as compared to lunar resources.  First is the nature of the feedstock or “ore.”  We have recently found that water at the poles of the Moon is not only present in enormous quantity (tens of billions of tons) but is also in a form that can be easily used – ice.  Ice can be converted into a liquid for further processing at minimal energy cost; if the icy regolith from the poles is heated to above 0° C, the ice will melt and water can be collected and stored.  The water in carbonaceous chondrites is chemically bound within mineral structures.  Significant amounts of energy are required to break these chemical bonds to free the water, at least 2-3 orders of magnitude more energy, depending on the specific mineral phase being processed.  So extracting water from an asteroid, present in quantities of a few percent to maybe a couple of tens of percent, requires significant energy; water-ice at the poles of the Moon is present in greater abundance (up to 100% in certain polar craters) and is already in an easy-to-process and use form.

The processing of natural materials to extract water has many detailed steps, from the acquisition of the feedstock to moving the material through the processing stream to collection and storage of the derived product.  At each stage, we typically separate one component from another; gravity serves this purpose in most industrial processing.  One difficulty in asteroid resource processing will be to either devise techniques that do not require gravity (including related phenomena, such as thermal convection) or to create an artificial gravity field to ensure that things move in the right directions.  Either approach complicates the resource extraction process.

The large distance from the Earth and poor accessibility of asteroids versus the Moon, works against resource extraction and processing.  Human visits to NEOs will be of short duration and because radio time-lags to asteroids are on the order of minutes, direct remote control of processing will not be possible.  Robotic systems for asteroid mining must be designed to have a large degree of autonomy.  This may become possible but presently we do not have enough information on the nature of asteroidal feedstock to either design or even envision the use of such robotic equipment.  Moreover, even if we did fully understand the nature of the deposit, mining and processing are highly interactive activities on Earth and will be so in space.  The slightest anomaly or miscalculation can cause the entire processing stream to break down and in remote operations, it will be difficult to diagnose and correct the problem and re-start it.

The accessibility issue also cuts against asteroidal resources.  We cannot go to a given asteroid at will; launch windows open for very short periods and are closed most of the time.  This affects not only our access to the asteroid but also shortens the time periods when we may depart the object to return our products to near-Earth space.  In contrast, we can go to and from the Moon at any time and its proximity means that nearly instantaneous remote control and response are possible.  The difficulties of remote control for asteroid activities have led some to suggest that we devise a way to “tow” the body into Earth orbit, where it may be disaggregated and processed at our leisure.  I shudder to think about being assigned to write the environmental impact (if you’ll pardon the expression) statement for that activity.

So where does that leave us in relation to space resource access and utilization?  Asteroid resource utilization has potential but given today’s technology levels, uncertain prospects for success.  Asteroids are hard to get to, have short visit times for round-trips, difficult work environments, and uncertain product yields.  Asteroids do have low gravity going for them.  In contrast, the Moon is close and has the materials we want in the form we need it.  The Moon is easily accessible at any time and is amenable to remote operations controlled from Earth in near-real time.  My perspective is that it makes the most sense to go to the Moon first and learn the techniques, difficulties and technology for planetary resource utilization by manufacturing propellant from lunar water.  Nearly every step of this activity – from prospecting, processing and harvesting – will teach us how to mine and process materials from future destinations, both minor and planetary sized-bodies.  Resource utilization has commonality of techniques and equipment, the requirement to move and work with particulate materials, and the ability to purify and store the products.  Learning how to access and process resources on the Moon is a general skill that transfers to any future space destination.

There was a reason that the Moon was made our first destination in the original Vision for Space Exploration.  It’s close, it’s interesting, and it’s useful.  Establishing a foothold on the Moon opens up cislunar space to routine access and development.  It will teach us the skills of a space faring people.  It makes sense to go there first and create a permanent space transportation system.  Once we have that, we get everything else.

Originally published August 31, September 1 and September 2, 2011 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Paul Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

"You can’t always get what you want..."

Twenty years and $86 billion = One human visit to an asteroid (from Wilhite et al., 2011)

Paul D. Spudis
The Once & Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

A plan for a human mission to a near Earth object (NEO; an asteroid), designed by engineers from Georgia Tech and the National Institute for Aerospace (GT/NIA), was recently posted online. Keying in on lowering program total costs, this architecture eliminates the need for a new heavy lift launch vehicle (HLV) by advocating the placement and use of space-based propellant depots.

Doug Stanley, one of the co-authors of this study, previously led NASA’s 2005 Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS). ESAS (a.k.a. Project Constellation, NASA’s chosen blueprint to implement the Vision for Space Exploration) was widely reviled by many in the space community as an Apollo Redux-style, unaffordable approach to lunar return. The 2009 Augustine Committee Report concluded that without a significant increase in NASA’s budget, a return to the Moon under the Constellation architecture was not achievable. President Obama’s Administration subsequently announced it was terminating both Constellation and lunar return.

This new study is an interesting approach to the problem of staging a human asteroid mission. It is written partly in response to the recent NASA Human Exploration Framework Team (HEFT) study, which designed and estimated costs for an asteroid mission in 2026 (the date called for in the Administration’s re-design of our strategic direction in space). The HEFT architecture was briefly famous two months ago, when it was pointed out that it had incorrectly concluded that NASA is unable to build a heavy lift launch vehicle under the Congressionally mandated cost and budget envelope of its recent authorization.

The new GT/NIA study proposes that commercial launch services, coupled with Earth orbital propellant depots, can create the infrastructure needed to stage a human mission to a NEO in 20 years (by 2031). While reviewing details of the study, I was specifically drawn to their cost estimates; the GT/NIA study concludes (depending on the specific launch options selected) that a human asteroid mission can be accomplished (by the time specified for a total program cost) for between $73B and $97B (constant FY2010 dollars). This number contrasts with the HEFT study estimate of $143B (an approach that develops and uses a 100 mT heavy lift launch vehicle).

What benefit do we gain with this expenditure? By 2031, we will have conducted a human mission to an asteroid, thereby reaching the first rung of the Augustine challenge for America’s space program to conduct a “series of space ‘firsts’.” We’ll have emplaced a fuel depot system that can support future human missions to other asteroids, or the moons of Mars (also called for in Augustine’s 2009 “Flexible Path” approach). As NASA will have no launch capability in the future, fuel supplied to these space-based depots will be dependent on commercial deliveries of propellant from Earth. This will be the “new way” of space – depots with fuel supplied by commercial vendors for sortie missions to various and as yet unspecified destinations. All of these missions will be dependent on the necessity of everything needed for space operations being launched (currently, deemed prohibitively expensive) from the surface of the Earth.

I have argued elsewhere that the “launch everything from Earth” template we’ve been locked into for the last 50 years has imprisoned us. Because of the “tyranny of the rocket equation,” we’ve been capability limited – hobbled by upfront launch requirements that consume otherwise useful reserves of mass and power – just to get into space. Propellant depots do not address this fundamental conundrum; they simply obviate the need for a very big launch vehicle by allowing us to stage complex, heavy missions from Earth in smaller increments. Propellant depots are a necessary but insufficient element in a long-term space faring strategy. To truly change the rules of spaceflight, we need to learn how to access and use what we find in space to create new capabilities in space. This involves learning how to use extraterrestrial resources of material and energy.

The Moon was picked as the first destination of the original Vision for Space Exploration because it contains resources in an accessible and readily usable form. By skipping past the Moon, it is certain that we will not use space resources for decades because, in order to access and begin using asteroid materials, we will need long-term, if not permanent, presence in the vicinity of the asteroid to characterize, experiment, and learn how to process its resources into usable forms. Initially, robotic missions can begin the characterization of resources, but robots are not sophisticated enough to set up and begin operating a production pipeline, which requires both repetitive and intelligent interaction with the processing. Unlike the Moon, the duration of human presence around a given NEO will be extremely limited by the ironclad laws of celestial mechanics.

It’s interesting to compare the new GT/NIA plan with the lunar return architecture that Tony Lavoie and I recently published. Our architecture also uses propellant depots, initially supplied from Earth but ultimately supplied from the Moon. It creates an expandable, fully functional resource outpost on the Moon, complete, with a reusable, extensible Earth-Moon transportation system capable of exporting rocket propellant to cislunar space within 16 years, at a program cost of $87B.

The affordable lunar return architecture begins the dissolution of space logistics from Earth’s apron strings, leaving in place a legacy infrastructure that can eventually take us beyond cislunar space. Such a system has important scientific, economic and national security value. In contrast, as much as I applaud the GT/NIA effort, their plan spends between $73-97B over 20 years for a single human mission to an as-yet unselected destination, and in the end, has us still launching everything from the Earth.

As painful as this upheaval in the space community has been, it need not be in vain. Both economic and scalable function is required for space operations. A healthy, viable national space program needs purpose and a return on investment. By returning to the Moon and using its resources, we get what we need in order to get what we want.

Hawking: asteroid impact our 'biggest threat'

The Weekend Feature
Daily Galaxy

"Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. We have observed, Hawking points out in Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter (below), which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks. "

Read the feature article, HERE.

Ignoring a Clear and Present Danger

Ray Villard
Cosmic Ray
Discovery.com blogs

"The irony now is that astronomers were quoting a 1 in 10,000 chance of seeing another repeat of the 1994 comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) impacts on Jupiter in our lifetimes. To everyone’s surprise another comet slammed into Jupiter just a few weeks ago. Granted this wasn’t nearly the scale of SL9, but astronomers were nevertheless left dumbfounded."

"Thankfully, largely privately funded all-sky “movie camera” telescopes planned, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan STARRS) will conduct the task of doing a census on Earth-killers by the end of the next decade."

"But even when rogue asteroids are listed on the astronomical equivalent of “America’s Most Wanted” what are we going to do about it?"

The Inner Solar System, Wednesday morning, August 12, 2009: This map shows the positions of all known asteroids in the inner Solar System. Earth's orbit is white, and all the red and yellow objects are potentially hazardous to life on Earth.

"One of the last men to walk on the moon, Senator Harrison Schmitt, (R-NM), wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week that the United States once had the capability, with the Apollo Saturn V rocket, to place a propulsion source on an asteroid and altered its path so as to miss the Earth.

"In the shadow of President Obama’s Augustine Committee that is reviewing NASA’s current manned space program, Schmidt was putting in a plug for the planned Ares V rocket – a monster Saturn V class heavyweight. “The Ares V, combined with a helium-3 fusion propulsion system, would be a giant step toward protecting the Earth in the future,” Schmitt wrote."

"But I cynically can’t imagine lawmakers getting serious about funding an Earth-defense payload, until it is too late..."

Read the Full Posting at Discovery.com, HERE.

Space Neighborhood needs watching

Blind Spots and Fuzzy Vision looking for Near-Earth Asteroids
Next Big Future

From New Scientist, existing sky surveys miss many asteroids smaller than 1 km across, leaving the door open to damaging impacts of Earth with little of no warning, a panel of scientists reports. Doing better will require devoting more powerful telescopes to asteroid hunting, but no one has committed the funds needed to do so, it says

NASA calculated, that to spot the asteroids as required by (Congressional mandate) would cost about $800 million between neo and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system... If NASA (received) only $300 million, if could find most asteroids bigger than 1000 feet across..."

More from Next Big Picture
Download the Report from NAP.edu, or,
Mirror Site (no registration necessary), HERE.

NEO detection not meeting congressional goals

Arecibo radar images of 2-kilometer-diameter asteroid 1992 UY4 made from four days’ observations in August 2005. Radar images are unusual in that the coordinates are not spatial ones on the plane of the sky. Rather, radar images are in delay and Doppler coordinates, corresponding for each pixel to its (relative) distance from us and its (relative) radial velocity, determined, respectively, by the time delay and Doppler shift of the echo. The delay (distance) resolution for these images is ~5 nanoseconds (7.5 meters, one-way), and the Doppler (velocity) resolution is 0.029 Hertz (~0.2 centimeters/second). The delay coordinate is vertical and the Doppler coordinate is horizontal. SOURCE: Lance Benner, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.

According to a new interim report from the National Research Council, "NEAR-EARTH OBJECT SURVEYS AND HAZARD MITIGATION STRATEGIES," NASA’s current near-Earth object surveys will not meet the congressionally mandated goal of discovering 90 percent of all objects over 140 meters in diameter by 2020. Funding for near-Earth object activities at NASA has been constrained, with most costs being met by funds from other programs.

A final report to be released later in 2009 will expand on the interim report with findings and recommendations on detecting, characterizing, and mitigating the hazard of near-Earth objects.

Download the Report from NAP.edu, or,
Mirror Site (no registration necessary), HERE.