Feb 4, 2016

Why Luxembourg wants to mine asteroids (Misleading, fabricated or sensationalist headlines like NASA/SSP soft Disclosure at the moment are hilarious, since first mining & secret corporate bases already were established back in 70'ish acc. to whistleblowers within the US military)

European spacecraft Rosetta makes contact with comet after 10-year chase
Could mining asteroids become a reality?

The small European country has announced ambitious plans to become a hub for asteroid mining. But how, and why?


Luxembourg is hoping to lead the race to mine minerals from asteroids.
Yes, you read that right. Luxembourg (population 543,000) has announced an ambitious plan to become “a European hub in the exploration and use of space resources”.


Here’s what it means.

What does Luxembourg want to do, exactly?


• It wants “to stimulate economic growth on Earth and offer new horizons in space exploration”.

• It will invest in companies investigating the field of asteroid mining.

• It wants to establish a “formal legal framework” so that companies mining asteroids for precious minerals know that they have the right to do so - and can legally sell what they bring back.

Luxembourg says it has a track record in the sector, thanks to local satellite operator SES, which was founded 30 years ago.

Why do we want to mine asteroids?


Planetary Resources, one of the few companies that wants to become a big noise in asteroid mining (it also happens to be backed by Google co-founder Larry Page), describes asteroids as “the low-hanging fruit of the solar system”.






They could be a rich source of platinum group metals, used in everything from catalytic converters and jewellery to electronics, medical devices, glass, and turbine blades. These metals are increasingly hard to mine on Earth. But in space, Planetary Resources says, “a single 500-metre platinum-rich asteroid contains more platinum than has been mined in the history of humanity”.
What are asteroids, anyway?

According to Nasa, an asteroid is a “relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the Sun”. In the Solar System, they are mostly found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Not to be confused with: a comet (moving balls of rock and ice with vapour trails); meteoroid (a small particle from a comet or asteroid); meteor (a shooting star, or rock falling through the Earth’s atmosphere); meteorite (a shooting star that lands on Earth without breaking up; kills off dinosaurs).

Unlike an asteroid, a meteor is an active object in the Solar System Photo: Alamy

So when will we start mining in space?


Don’t expect practical developments any time soon. Luxembourg’s deputy prime minister, Itienne Schneider, says this new initiative will start off with research, moving on to “more concrete activities in space” at a “later stage”.

Luxembourg hasn’t put a figure on how much it will commit to this new scheme, saying simply it will come out of its budget for the European Space Agency (ESA), which will next be reviewed in December this year.

The Philae probe landed on a comet in 2014


It goes without saying that mining in space would be incredibly expensive, and no practical technology yet exists for carrying it out. Though the ESA did land a probe on a comet in 2014 – a breakthrough mission showing it could be possible to land on an asteroid.

Later this year, Nasa’s Osiris-Rex mission will attempt to return a 60g sample from an asteroid to Earth at a pricetag of around $1bn. A mining mission would have to cost significantly less than that, particularly as the current slump in commodity prices means that metals mined on Earth are cheaper than they have been in years.

So asteroid mining doesn’t exactly look cost effective. Yet.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/12137693/asteroid-mining-luxembourg-space-plan-esa.html