In what is being called a potential “game changer” for the proposed use of asteroids as a way to gather resources for space exploration, one company is developing a new technique of gathering water and other valuable minerals out of interstellar rocks using light and heat.
According to Space.com, the technique is known as “optical mining.” Supporters believe that the method would allow large quantities of asteroid water to be collected and used to help create a less expensive, more accessible propellant for shuttles and probes traveling through space.
Known as the Asteroid Provided In-Situ Supplies (Apis) plan, the patent-pending, NASA-funded technique could significantly reduce the cost of spaceflight. Apis team scientists presented their NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)-funded concept earlier this month at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ (AIAA) Space 2015 meeting.
Apis is funded in part by an NIAC fellowship and grant, and principal investigator Joel Sercel, founder and principal engineer at ICS Associates Inc. and TransAstra, told Space.com that they are in the process of “putting together a business model… that moves reusability into space and more commercial methods and practices into deep space.”
Sercel, who formerly worked at the US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and helped create the NASA Solar Technology Application Readiness (NSTAR) ion propulsion system used on the Dawn spacecraft, said Apis could support space exploration by offering consumables and propellant for forthcoming missions to the moon and Mars.
But does it actually work?
The goal of the Apis optical mining method, Sercel told Space.com, is to excavate carbonaceous chondrite asteroid surfaces, forcing water and other volatile substances out of excavated material and into an inflatable bag – and doing it all without the need for complex robotic machines.
His team proposes harvesting up to 100 metric tons of water from a near-Earth asteroid, and then taking the collected material to a depot location (possibly in orbit around the moon) using a lone SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch. Sercel said that he and his colleagues have already conducted a series of simulations and experiments to find out how the approach would work in space.
The Apis team is using the large solar furnace at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico as part of their experiments, and by the end of next month, he said that they will conduct a series of proof-of-concept experiments in which they will superheat mock asteroids, using mirrors to simulate reflected and concentrated sunlight.
The ultimate goal is to use a process called spalling, in which miniature but explosive pops of expanding gas force out particles and other gases, from which water and other volatiles could be harvested. Sercel told Space.com that he hopes the upcoming experiments demonstrate that the materials can be excavated using highly-concentrated beams of optical energy.
“It actually digs holes and tunnels into the rock,” he said. “The heat goes in, is absorbed in thin layers and drives out the volatiles in tiny, explosive-like pops that eject material in a controllable way. We believe that highly concentrated sunlight can drill holes, excavate, disrupt, and shape an asteroid while the asteroid is enclosed in a containment bag.”
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Feature Image: NASA
Story Image: TransAstra
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