This week while everyone was looking at Pluto pics, an asteroid flew by the Earth worth
5.4 TRILLION DOLLARS.
WHY AREN'T WE UP THERE?
Think of the DOLLARS?
Asteroids fly by the Earth all the time, and even though the 5.4 trillion dollar 2011 UW158
seems like a missed opportunity, back in 2013, asteroid 2012 DA14 flew by, and it was worth
some 20 trillion!
In case you're curious -- and you're a DNews watcher so I know you are -- some asteroids
are simply worth a LOT of money.
And it's just floating out there, ready for the taking.
Asteroids range in sizes, compositions, and shapes.
Some are bundles or rubble, held together by their own gravity, others are solid, pock-marked
survivors from the early solar system.
Looking at UW158 they found a fast-spinning asteroid, meaning it wasn't a collection of
rubble (because it wouldn't sustain such a spin) and looked sort of like the inside of
a walnut.
But after looking at the spin, astronomers wanted to know what the old gal was made of…
which kind of is an imprecise science -- or at least a fun debate.
Once asteroids are located, scientists use ground-based infrared telescopes and spectrometers
to see which minerals exist in the structure…
different minerals absorb light at different wavelengths -- once they bounce the light
off the asteroid, they compare it to charts we have from Earth.
They can even bounce radar off the asteroids and determine composition by what is reflected
back.
It's never made of just one thing, it's moving, so there's usually a scientific debate as
to the different minerals present in pretty much ANY ASTEROID.
Once the composition is (more or less) determined asteroids are assigned a spectral classification,
SEPARATE from their letter names -- for example S-Type means they're found in the inner area
of the asteroid belt, closer to Mars and are mainly stony, C-Type means they're in the
outer main belt and are more carbonaceous (80 percent of asteroids are C-type), but
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,M,P,Q,R,S,T and V gets confusing!
Of course, all this can be checked by sending a spacecraft to rendezvous with these minor
planets - like NASA did with the NEAR spacecraft in 2001, but that's SO expensive it's been
tough to justify…
Pointing these tools at UW158 tells us it might have a core of platinum, maybe as much
as 90 million tons of it -- thus the high price tag.
But getting there, mining it, and bringing it back is ALSO expensive.
UW158 was added to NASA's Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study,
or NASA's NEO NHATS.
These are asteroids we recognize might be candidates for future manned asteroid missions.
Billionaires with space on the brain like Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, as well
as Virgin's Richard Branson all want to mine these things!
The problem is sending the materials to mine an asteroid into high Earth orbit costs about
10 million dollars per ton… and the tech is relatively untested.
I say relatively, because last week Planetary Resources' Arkyd 3 Reflight spacecraft was
launched from the International Space Station.
The A3R is the first proof-of-concept test vehicle for landing and extracting resources
from an asteroid.
We're on our way chaps.
When the A6 goes up later this year, it will have tools to spot water, and infrared to
seek minerals on asteroids -- which you know all about now.
These are the first steps into the space economy.
What do you think about asteroid mining?
Should we keep our greedy fingers on the ground, or get up there before someone else does?