by Chris Becker

Today’s price update from the iron ore complex, with both spot and swap prices falling from a near 3 month high:

While this may sound wacky, the future for mineral extraction is above the Pilbara, not below it. From SBS:

Interplanetary mining company, Deep Space Industries, has announced plans to mine near-Earth asteroids within the next decade. If successful, this could be the world’s first asteroid resource mining mission.

Deep Space Industries, who made the announcement on Tuesday, intends to launch a test spacecraft called Prospector-1 as early as 2017. It would be an “experimental mission to low-Earth orbit that will test key technologies needed for low-cost exploration spacecraft,” reads the company’s official statement.

Following the test run, an improved spacecraft, Prospectus-X, will travel beyond Earth to nearby asteroids to explore and mine them for mineral resources.

Though asteroid mining has been long discussed by scientists, there is still little we know about how it works in practice. Could mining affect an asteroid’s geology? Are its minerals transportable across space?

Images of Prospector-1 (via Deep Space Industries)

Dr Alice Gorman, a member of the Space Industry Association of Australia, and Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies at Flinders University, tells SBS Science that Deep Space Industries’ missions could mean just as much for the advancement of space exploration as they do for the mining sector.

“The significance of this mission is that it’s testing methods of locating a highly critical resource, water, as well as the water-powered thruster technology that can use this resource. So it’s two proof-of-concept missions in one package,” she explains.

“Success could mean we’re one step closer to developing space-based industries.

For mind, this is much more exciting than transporting dirt through the Pilbara, but a lot more risky, something Australia doesn’t do. But it could well be the future of mineral extraction and indeed processing, where energy and materials are effectively infinite.

Daily iron ore price update (asteroids)