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59 Mining The recent launch of the Osiris-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) project marks a starting point for mining on asteroids, in a bid to discover and acquire new mineral resources. It is NASA’s first asteroid sampling mission, and was launched in September 2016 on a two-year journey to the asteroid Bennu. When it arrives, it will scan the surface with Lidar and microwave sensors to build up a 3D map of the terrain and the structure of the first few millimetres of the surface, which is the regolith in the craft’s title. It will land at an appropriate location on the 490 m diameter asteroid and collect a large sample of about 2 kg of the regolith to bring back to Earth. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, and principal investigator for the mission, says, “The mission will develop important technologies for asteroid exploration that will benefit anyone interested in exploring or mining asteroids, whether it’s NASA or a private company.” Osiris-Rex has been designed with triple redundancy for its sample acquisition – if the first attempt fails, the team can try twice more to get at least 60 g worth. The team hopes to sample a site rich in organic molecules for clues to the organic chemistry in the early Solar System that led to the emergence of life on Earth. “This will help map the distribution of organic molecules on the asteroid and guide sample site selection based on that information,” says Lauretta. “The mission will be a proof of concept – can you go to an asteroid, get material and bring it back to Earth? Next, people will have to industrialise it so that the economics works out, as out of the recoverable value of the material for any given asteroid, you’re spending half of that to bring it back.” Closer to home, so to speak, the projects in the Lunar-X challenge have until the end of the year to agree their launch deals to put a rover on the Moon. The first three to do so are Moon Express, SpaceIL and Synergy Moon. Unmanned space vehicles | Insight Unmanned Systems Technology | October/November 2016 The ExoMars rover is heading to the Red Planet in 2018 (Courtesy of ESA)