History of Asteroid Mining

By MindU

  • Galileo points out craters on the lunar surface

    Galileo built his first telescope in late 1609, and turned it to the Moon for the first time on November 30, 1609. He discovered that, contrary to general opinion at that time, the Moon was not a perfect sphere, but had both mountains and cup-like depressions. These were named craters by Schroeter (1791), extending its previous use with volcanoes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_craters)

  • Idea of reasoning behind lunar craters is proposed

    Robert Hooke in "Micrographia" (1665) proposed two hypotheses for lunar crater formation: one that the craters caused by projectile bombardment from space, the other that they were the products of subterranean lunar volcanism.[4]

  • First discovered asteroid

    In 1801, while making a star map, Giuseppe Piazzi accidentally discovered a small object 1000 kilometers (600 miles) in diameter between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Piazzi named the object Ceres. It was the first asteroid to be discovered. (https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/exploring-the-planets/online/solar-system/asteroids/)

  • The discovery of Ceres

    It was the first member of the asteroid belt to be discovered when Giuseppe Piazzi spotted it in 1801.
  • Period: to

    Duration of the Apollo program

    During this program, samples confirmed that asteroid impacts created lunar craters

  • NEO's gain particular interest

    NEOs have generated increased interest since the 1980s because of greater awareness of this potential danger.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object)

  • Ceres classified as a dwarf planet

    Being called an asteroid for so many years, it was so huge that it was classified as a dwarf planet

  • NASA's project RAP assessed the possibilities of asteroid mining and their possibilities

    In 2012, NASA commissioned a project called Robotic Asteroid Prospector (RAP), intended to assess the feasibility of asteroid mining. They identified four different classes of asteroid missions that would be possible using conventional technology (or what is already in the process of being developed).
    (https://interestingengineering.com/asteroid-mining-to-shape-the-future-of-our-wealth)

  • Honeybee Robotics creates an asteroid water extraction test

    A water extraction test in 2016[38] by Honeybee Robotics used asteroid regolith simulant[39] developed by Deep Space Industries and the University of Central Florida to match the bulk mineralogy of a particular carbonaceous meteorite

  • First sample of an asteroid's core material are returned

    The capsule appeared like a small fireball streaking across the early morning sky of the Australian outback Sunday as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere. The fireball was witnessed about 12:30 p.m. ET Saturday -- 4:30 a.m. Australian time Sunday.
    (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/05/world/hayabusa2-asteroid-sample-earth-return-scn-trnd/index.html)

  • Deep Space Industries plans to begin mining asteroids

  • NASA returns astronauts to lunar surface as mandated by White House