【2020 Archives】

In 2030020 Archives a robotic emissary launched from Earth seven years earlier will lay eyes on a metal world never seen from close range.

That NASA spacecraft, known as Psyche, will carry with it a number of instruments designed to spy on the the metallic world called 16 Psyche as it circles the sun.

SEE ALSO: NASA to explore a metal asteroid that could be the core of a doomed planet

16 Psyche — which is 130 miles wide — could be the remains of the dead core of a planet whose outer layers were stripped from it in the early era of our solar system, and it probably has hundreds of scientific mysteries just waiting to be unlocked within it.

But that's not all.

The scientific study of 16 Psyche may indirectly help make asteroid mining — a science fiction-sounding concept that literally involves extracting rare minerals, water or other materials from a rock floating in space — a reality.

"I think the most important things we're going to discover are: What are the surface conditions of a metal asteroid like?" Psyche mission principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton said during a press conference.

"What might landing challenges be? What is the topography? Is it covered with some kind of regolith [dirt]? Is it actually a smooth and hard surface?"

All of those questions need to be answered before anyone can send a spacecraft to mine an asteroid in the future.

Worth more than gold

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Proponents of asteroid mining think that space rocks all over the solar system are probably filled with all of the same materials we find on Earth, but the most valuable in space won't be gold or platinum necessarily.

Instead, companies hoping to strike it rich during the asteroid prospecting boom are looking for oxygen, water, nitrogen and other elements that can be used to take us farther into the universe.

Those elements, if used correctly, can create fuel to power rockets and launch robotic or even crewed missions to far-off destinations.

"If we go there and we discover it's easily minable and it has mineral resources that could be converted to water, then Psyche could be the perfect stepping stone to the outer solar system," Elkins-Tanton said.

Elkins-Tanton isn't the only one who thinks the Psyche mission could be great for asteroid mining in the future.

Chris Lewicki, the CEO of the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, also thinks that the Psyche mission could help gather data that will allow his company to explore and exploit asteroids in the future.

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"Knowing how a metallic asteroid like Psyche came to be and what that means kind of helps us put the 50,000 meteorites scientists have analyzed on Earth into context," Lewicki told Mashablein an interview. "We have a lot of pieces of asteroids but we actually don't know enough about them as places, so this actually helps to fill that story in."

One of many

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

16 Psyche isn't the only asteroid scientists will be able to use to help them figure out how to extract materials from the objects.

Earlier missions and ground-based observations have helped scientists characterize asteroids passing near Earth, and those same observations have helped Lewicki and his company figure out what types of asteroids they want to seek.

Lewicki credits the Galileo spacecraft's views of the asteroid Gaspra in the 1990s as some of the first bits of data that may help mining efforts in the future.

Asteroid mining in general could also help boost up other parts of the space industry, Lewicki said.

"Asteroid mining doesn't exist in a vacuum," Lewicki said. "It's really part of an overall space economy."

Companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin focus on getting people and objects to space, while Lewicki's can focus on getting resources once there.

"That's what building the space economy is," Lewicki added.

A long way to go

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Planetary Resources and other companies like it still have a long way to go before any kind of robotic asteroid mining becomes a reality.

For its part, Lewicki's company has already launched one mission help them work out the specifics of how to extract resources from other places in the universe.

The company deployed its Arkyd 3 spacecraft from the International Space Station in 2015, and they have more missions on the way. The Arkyd 6 missions launching this year are designed to help Planetary Resources characterize asteroids rich with water, a feat akin to prospecting on Earth, Lewicki said.

The spacecraft are all designed to help Planetary Resources figure out exactly how to make their mining operations eventually operate in space one step at a time.

Each craft will test out various technologies that will help the company figure out exactly what it needs to send a mining probe out into the solar system in the next decade or so.

Another newly announced NASA mission is also going to characterize some asteroids starting in the 2020s.

The Lucy mission is designed to check out Jupiter's Trojan asteroids — two groups of space rocks that orbit the sun from in front of and behind the giant planet.

Those asteroids are trapped in Jupiter's gravity and thought to be leftovers from some of the earliest days of the solar system.

NASA also announced it is funding continued work on the NEOCam spacecraft that, if launched, will keep an eye out for dangerous asteroids coming near Earth.

Other missions like NASA's OSIRIS-REx will also explore asteroids, and that data should, however incidentally, aid in making asteroid mining a reality.

"All these things are really important continued work that NASA is funding to understand these really interesting and important members of the solar system family out there," Lewicki said.

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