There is gold out there on asteroids . Silver and atomic number 78 and Ti , too . And if we ’re seriously go to mine asteroid , it might be easy to tow them closer to Earth . But that could be serious trouble for orbiter , according to newfangled calculation by astrophysicist .
NASA was recently considering an Asteroid Redirect Mission , where it would tow a heap - sized asteroid into range around the Sun Myung Moon for . ( It ended up choosing a architectural plan to pull a boulder off an asteroid and place it in lunar orbit , instead . ) But relocating an asteroid nigher to Earth to advantageously mine its resources is a not unrealistic design that deserves some serious thought . And in the case of astrophysicist , some serious maths .
( Why have it revolve around the moon rather than the Earth ? A recent episode Gizmodo ’s podcast Meanwhile in the Future explains thedangers of a second moonlight . )
New Scientist reportson a newspaper publisher recently uploaded to ArXiv that talks about the danger of dust coming from asteroids being drilled and forge for treasured metals . Of special vexation is satellites in geosynchronous orbit . These satellites are in an orbital cavity that takes them to the same stead in the sky at the same fourth dimension everyday , earn them peculiarly important for communications and defense . Here ’s what might materialise :
allot toCasey Handmerof the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and Javier Roa of the Technical University of Madrid in Spain , 5 per cent of the at large junk will end up in region traversed by satellites . Over 10 years , it would pass over geosynchronous compass 63 time on average . A orbiter in the untimely situation at the amiss time will endure a damaging high - swiftness hit with that dust .
The subject also see at the “ ruinous disturbance ” of an asteroid 5 m across or bigger . Its total break - up into a pile of rubble would increase the peril to satellites by more than 30 per cent .
There ’s not much risk from NASA ’s design delegation , but larger - scurf asteroid mining could add real risks . And there ’s a lesson we should have learned from excavation on Earth : There is no excavation without waste .
[ New Scientist , ArXiv ]
Top image : Paul Fleet / shutterstock
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