In early December, the NASA OSIRIS-REx probe arrived at the asteroid Bennu for rock samples. Next year, the Chinese apparatus "Chang'e-5" with a drilling rig on board will fly to the Moon. One of the goals of such expeditions is prospecting for minerals, since without space resources, humanity will not be able to master the solar system.
Moon mines
China successfully sends its fourth device to the Moon. Now it is the only country in the world implementing the lunar program. Its result should be an automatic or habitable base on the surface of the satellite.
Deployment of a permanent module on the Moon is impossible without the exploitation of local resources necessary for life support systems, protection of the crew from radiation, energy, production of rocket fuel, consumables for a 3D printer, on which parts of cars and buildings will be printed.
According to the estimates of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences (GEOKHI), only at the initial stage of the exploration of the Moon, in order to provide a cargo flow, two hundred tons of oxygen and fifty tons of hydrogen will be required. It is too expensive to ship all of this from Earth.
Volatile compounds are especially valuable resources. In a frozen state, they are at the poles of the Moon: water ice, ammonia, carbon monoxide, light hydrocarbons. The lunar soil - regolith - contains oxygen, metals, silica. It is critical to get them to be mined locally.
Geological robot for a future lunar mission / GEOKHI RAS.
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Technologies for the development and storage of minerals from the regolith are being actively developed. But first they need to be scouted, that is, to get samples from different places on the moon. For this purpose, GEOCHI creates a robotic geologist who will be involved in one of the expeditions.
Water and nickel asteroids
Two years ago, NASA's OSIRIS-REx headed for the small asteroid Bennu, half a kilometer across. The probe reached its target on December 3rd and has already made its first observations. On the surface of the asteroid, hydroxyl groups (OH) were revealed - in fact, this is water, only trapped in the crystal structure of clay minerals.
For a while, OSIRIS-REx will fly in front of the asteroid, explore it remotely, and then approach, shoot nitrogen across the surface and capture the rising dust. He will deliver valuable booty to Earth in 2023.
Then NASA will launch another search mission - to the asteroid Psyche. It is a large celestial body with a diameter of over two hundred kilometers. The Spitzer telescope's spectrometer found silicates, hydroxyl groups, and a very dense substance that scientists believe is metal particles on its surface. Apparently, Psyche is the core of the protoplanet, which managed to stratify before decay.
Scientists suggest that this asteroid is entirely composed of iron and nickel, only on the surface there is a thin layer of regolith, in fact - sand.
The American interplanetary station OSIRIS-REx, designed to deliver soil samples from the asteroid (101955) Bennu.
Extraterrestrial economy
Researchers believe that very soon mankind will have to look for extraterrestrial sources of minerals that contain rare or nearly depleted elements: gold, cobalt, iron, ruthenium, rhenium, bismuth, osmium, rhodium, molybdenum, magnesium, nickel, palladium, platinum.
Modern technologies make it possible to commission mines on the Moon and asteroids by the middle of the XXI century. Prospector robots will work there - devices weighing about two hundred kilograms, which are to be massively launched into space. For the development of deposits on asteroids to be economically profitable, the technologies for the delivery of miners, their return with a load of ore, and logistics must be cheap.
From an economic point of view, the production of helium-3 on the Moon, which accumulates in the regolith under the influence of the solar wind, is also discussed. There are no deposits of this substance on Earth, it is produced in the nuclear industry exclusively for research purposes at a rate of several tens of kilograms per year.
Interest in helium-3 arose in the late 1980s in connection with the success of thermonuclear energy. Scientists stated that this substance could serve as fuel for tokamaks and, if necessary, solve the Earth's energy problems.
Another argument in favor of an extraterrestrial ore industry is environmental. Some rare elements, especially platinum subgroups, are involved in green technologies: solar panels, catalysts. There are very few deposits of these ores, their depletion will require deepening mines, which will leave an already strong carbon footprint. But the transfer of mining to other space bodies will significantly reduce the load on the environment of our planet.
Exploration of space depths. Illustration by RIA Novosti. Source: Global Technology Trends.
Tatiana Pichugina