We are taking a look back at stories from Cosmos Magazine in print, this article is from March 2025 by Drew Turney. Recent space missions and a nascent industry are taking asteroid mining from science fiction to science fact. It’s expected to be a goldmine, both figuratively and literally. But below the surface there’s more at stake for humanity than you might think.
Scheduled for 2029, OSIRIS-APEX will study the surface of the asteroid Apophis, to understand its properties. Credit: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
You might assume asteroid mining aims to extract resources, returning them to Earth for a ready supply of precious metals. That’s what AstroForge is all about.
The Huntington Beach, California-based company is on a mission to help Earth find the materials we need in space. “Platinum group metals have an essential role in almost everything we interact with daily,” says Matt Gialich, CEO and founder of AstroForge. “They represent a massive market on Earth, but resources are dwindling.
“We want to help meet demand by extracting sustainably, and if we can, mine, refine and use materials directly in space. We can build infrastructure without needing constant resupply missions. It makes the economics of space exploration much more sustainable.”
But any decent economist will tell you flooding a market with sudden, overabundant supply devalues a commodity. What’s so special about diamonds if they’re plentiful and cheap as plastic?
The Winklevoss twins (famous for Facebook’s early years) sparked internet hype when they told a podcast host Bitcoin was a better investment than gold. “There’s billions of dollars of gold floating in asteroids around this planet, and Elon [Musk] is gonna get up there and start mining gold. […] That’s why gold is a problem, because the supply isn’t fixed like Bitcoin.”
But Gialich says platinum group metals – AstroForge’s target – are a different story. “If asteroid mining scales to the point of flooding the market it might change how we value these materials, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” he says.
“Imagine a future where materials are affordable enough to fuel massive advancements in technology, medicine or infrastructure. It’s less about maintaining artificial scarcity and more about unlocking potential for innovation.”
Professor Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory says we’ve seen it happen. “Aluminium didn’t lose its value when it became more widely available,” she says, “it simply became used in more applications”.
Professor Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Credit: University of Arizona.
Stepping stones to space
Beyond that, material extraction for sustainable applications on Earth isn’t the only point of asteroid mining – or even the most important one, depending on who you ask.
Professor Gretchen Benedix, a founding member of Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre, describes the acronym ‘in situ resource utilisation’ (ISRU). “It’s a springboard,” she says. “It’s about being self-sustaining when you go into space.”
Benedix draws a comparison with going camping, where you take everything you need in and out again. Applied to space travel that means a lot of fuel – you need to use between 60 and 90% just to leave Earth. Finding or making fuel during the trip would make space travel far easier.
And the potential answer is deceptively simple: ice. In the cold of space, plenty of bodies have – or are expected to have – large reserves of ice, and ice means water.
You might think that means using local water to support extraterrestrial human outposts, grow food, etc. That’s possible, but there’s an even more important use case.
Any year 9 science class can use electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Even though we’ll need all-new engineering to figure out how to do this in deep space, oxygen is about the most precious thing you can find in space: rocket fuel.
That means asteroid mining may support a goal far loftier than economics and investments. “Essentially, asteroids become stepping stones for the future of humanity’s presence beyond Earth,” says DellaGiustina.
“It’s about creating infrastructure for a self-sustaining economy, which can make space exploration cheaper and more feasible, by reducing dependence on Earth-bound supply chains.”
Professor Gretchen Benedix, a founding member of Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre. Credit: Supplied.
Who pays?
Even though mining an asteroid to bring back a saddlebag of diamonds isn’t the point, we’re still waiting for the pivot to make it economically viable. How do we find – or even hasten – it?
“It’ll come from a mix of advancing technology, falling costs and increasing demand for resources – which is the point we’re at now,” says Gialich.
“Reusable rockets, better, cheaper spacecraft and more efficient mining and refining systems are all making space mining more practical.
“Then there’s demand. The need for materials is growing for things like EVs and renewable energy. Earth’s resources are limited and increasingly expensive to extract, so at some point, asteroid mining will become the better option economically and environmentally.”
Benedix reminds us that our culture also changes economies and demand for commodities. Asteroid mining will do the same. “The economic value of critical resources has changed over history. A thousand years ago, salt was a critical resource, worth more than oil,” she points out.
Today, consider coltan. It’s a metallic ore used to make tantalum capacitors in personal electronics, and is speculated to be common in asteroids. The mobile phone age has increased coltan demand by up to a hundred-fold since 1950, and extraction in politically sensitive parts of the world makes it something of a necessary evil.
Or perhaps water will be the critical resource. Abundant and plentiful for most of human history, water may become so precious it could underpin the whole asteroid mining industry.
“Another tipping point is likely to come from policy support,” says DellaGiustina, “clear regulations and incentivising early investment can de-risk asteroid mining.”
Recent asteroid missions
The possibility of mining asteroids has come closer as we’ve learned more about them. Benedix recalls how, when she was studying for her Masters in the early 1990s, astronomers had to assume asteroids were essentially spherical, because there was little visual evidence to the contrary. But just like Socrates, more study only confirms how little we know.
OSIRIS-REx
When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx arrived at the asteroid 101955 Bennu in December 2018, video from the sample collection mission was startling.
The Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) used to collect material caused a shower of debris – Bennu (at least where OSIRIS-REx touched down) wasn’t solid at all but loosely packed gravel.
“OSIRIS-REx’s interaction with Bennu highlights the challenges around capturing materials without destabilising the asteroid,” says DellaGiustina. “That means we need missions to study the compositions and structures before we go to extract resources.”
DART
Another milestone came with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection test (DART) in September 2022 when a probe impacted Dimorphous, part of a twin asteroid system.
DART was actually about planetary defence, in case of a nightmare scenario where we find an extinction-level bolide on a collision course. But it bolstered the possibility of asteroid mining in critical ways.
There were quantum leaps in autonomous navigation and impactor technology. The comparatively low-impact DART mission didn’t destroy Dimorphous, it just ‘nudged’ it.
This mission made for a spectacularly successful proof-of-concept about the potential to move bodies to orbits or positions that suit us. It’s a critical ability we’ll need for rocks we want to access and use rather than obliterate.
Every successful space mission emboldens us – and those who hold purse strings – to reach further.
Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos- Dimorphos binary asteroid system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben.
Regulating the industry
Legislation and regulation are notoriously bad at keeping up with rapidly advancing technology.
While space exploration is slower moving and the barrier to entry higher than many technologies, there are significant risks. For example, if asteroids contain some substance that transforms the global economy, it could give the discoverer untold political and market power. How will others – such as smaller, poorer countries without their own space agencies, industries and multibillionaires – get a look in?
Benedix refers to historical examples of new frontiers. People established industries and only started thinking about rules later. “You kind of have to let it be a little bit of a free-for-all because you can’t define a relevant framework until you get there,” she says.
That said, frameworks to exploit space resources do already exist, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Treaty. Then there’s the more recent US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which allows US companies to explore and exploit space resources but affirms that the US doesn’t “assert sovereignty, or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body”.
“International consensus is still evolving,” DellaGiustina says. “Companies are pushing forward under the assumption the legal framework will catch up. A clear and predictable regulatory environment will encourage more investment, but the industry probably won’t wait for perfect clarity, it’ll develop iteratively as the technology progresses.”
We do have a model for peaceful international co-stewardship of a piece of nature that’s worked for decades. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty asserts Earth’s only continent not natively inhabited by humans will be used for peaceful purposes, with any scientific discoveries to be shared.
Of course, it’s hard not to be a little cynical. The above agreements were signed when asteroid mining was the domain of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov rather than the more likely realities of companies such as SpaceX and AstroForge.
An expanding universe
For now, it’s early days. Benedix offers a casual estimate that asteroid mining won’t be an entrenched, self-sufficient industry for a century, but companies like AstroForge wouldn’t exist if their backers didn’t think they’d see a return on their investment in their lifetime.
For now, every successful launch and every probe that touches down on an asteroid elevates the industry.
“In the long term, that accessibility lays the groundwork for regular traffic to and from space, and that’s what space industries like mining will need,” DellaGiustina says.
As a scientist, Benedix asks if we might be putting too much emphasis on the economic outcomes of asteroid mining. Sourcing precious metals and finding sustainable sources of materials we use every day, are urgent and important problems to solve in their own right.
Plus, asteroid mining could be the next stepping stone to exploration. It could allow spacecraft to refine and process fuels for the next leg of their journeys, exploring in self-powered stages, expanding humanity’s understanding of the universe further than ever before.
And whether it’s landing on the Moon, looking for life, or mining asteroids, that’s what our species has always strived for: exploring the great unknown.