According to Gizmodo, researchers from Spain’s Institute of Space Sciences spent over a decade analyzing 28 meteorite samples to figure out which asteroids are worth mining. Their study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, singles out carbon-rich asteroids loaded with the minerals olivine and spinel as the ideal targets. These minerals are associated with valuable deposits of iron, nickel, gold, platinum, and rare earth elements. The work builds on missions like NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, which proved we can grab samples from asteroids, but scaling that up for mining remains a massive challenge. Startups like California’s AstroForge are trying, but its first demo mission in April 2023 failed after losing contact with its spacecraft. Basically, the science is pointing the way, but the engineering and economics are still a huge question mark.
The Science Is Cool, The Logistics Are A Nightmare
Here’s the thing: identifying a promising rock is just step one of about a thousand. The study is solid work—it uses detailed mass spectrometry to understand the chemical makeup of these carbonaceous chondrites. And that’s genuinely valuable science for understanding our solar system’s history. But going from a lab sample to an industrial-scale mining operation in microgravity is a leap of faith so huge it might as well be a different universe. We’re talking about developing advanced propulsion to get there, robotic systems to extract material, and then some form of in-orbit refining to process tons of rock. Oh, and then you have to get the valuable stuff back to Earth safely, which requires large-scale reentry tech we simply don’t have. It’s a cascade of unsolved engineering problems.
The Economic Equation Doesn’t Add Up Yet
Look, the researchers themselves admit that most asteroids have “relatively small abundances” of the good stuff. So the entire business case hinges on accessing those precious metals at a cost lower than mining them on Earth, even after you factor in the trillion-dollar infrastructure build-out in space. I think we all remember the asteroid mining hype of the early 2010s, when companies like Planetary Resources were going to make us all trillionaires. Where are they now? The fundamental economics haven’t changed. A single mission failure, like AstroForge’s lost spacecraft, can wipe out a startup. Until someone demonstrates a reliable, repeatable, and—crucially—cheap way to do this, it’s a money pit for investors chasing a sci-fi dream.
So What’s The Real Near-Term Play?
If you ask me, the real value of this research isn’t about funding asteroid mining startups next year. It’s about in-situ resource utilization for deeper space exploration. Think about it: if we ever want to build a sustained presence on the Moon or Mars, we’ll need to use local materials. Understanding how to extract water from asteroids or process regolith for construction materials is a much more plausible and immediate application. The tech developed for that—like robust, automated processing systems—could eventually inform future mining tech. In fact, reliable industrial computing hardware, like the kind used in extreme environments on Earth from IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs, would be a foundational requirement for any such automated refining operation, whether on an asteroid or a lunar base. The path to asteroid mining probably runs through the Moon first.
A Dream Deferred, Not Dead
Is the dream dead? Not exactly. The science is advancing, and sample return missions are proving out pieces of the puzzle. But the timeline has shifted from “coming soon” to “maybe someday this century.” The researchers are right—sample returns seemed like fiction 30 years ago, and now they’re routine. So maybe in another 30 years, we’ll look back and laugh at how naive we were to think it was so hard. But for now, the report is a useful catalog of potential targets for when, and if, the technology and the economics ever finally align. Until then, it’s a fascinating thought experiment built on very real, very careful science.
