The Future Of The Space Economy | CNBC Marathon

The first billionaire there will be the one who exploits the natural resources of asteroids. A single asteroid the size of a football field could contain between $25 billion and $50 billion worth of platinum. There is enough material in asteroids to support a population of one billion people. The

space

suits that NASA now uses on the International Space Station are suits that were actually designed in the 1970s. Estimates show that by the time the new

space

suits are actually in use, NASA will have spent more than $1 billion in its redesign and production. NASA likely won't build the next space station. Instead, the agency will rely on technology from outside companies.

The useful life of the International Space Station could be coming to an end. This may sound like an astronaut training for the Olympics, but that's not what's really happening here. For the ISS, you want a rigid lower half with the ability to rotate around the waist. And then a consistent work environment, which is right here in front of you. Easy to move along handrails. So low torque at the top joints. Good glove dexterity is very important. Eric Valis is a senior systems engineer. It has been testing a prototype of a new spacesuit, which NASA hopes to use on the International Space Station by 2026.

The spacesuits that NASA is using now on the International Space Station are suits that were actually designed in the 1970s. These are suits that were originally designed for the Space Shuttle program. Due to lack of funding, NASA continued working on them, repairing and maintaining them for all these many years. But really, these are suits that are at the end of their useful life. NASA has tried to update its suits in the past. A 2021 report from NASA's Office of Inspector General found that NASA has spent more than a decade and an estimated $420 million to develop a next-generation replacement for its aging spacesuits, but failed to produce any suits. operational.

Estimates show that by the time the new spacesuits are actually in use, NASA will have spent more than $1 billion on their redesign and production. There were two different issues. One was the lack of financing. NASA had to get funding, you know, sometimes from other projects to finance their lawsuit. And the second problem was that there was no destination. NASA projects have been advancing along different political agendas over the past few years, and one thing you need in any science and technology organization is a purpose and a timeline. NASA is now going another route, hiring commercial companies to manufacture and maintain its new suits.

Without further ado, I am pleased to announce that the winners will be the industrial team at Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace. CNBC got a rare look inside Collins Aerospace's new 120,000-square-foot manufacturing and testing facility located at Spaceport Houston in Texas, where the company showed us its new spacesuit. NASA's current spacesuits, known as Extravehicular Mobility Units, or EMUs at NASA, are very complex. The current spacesuit has approximately 18,000 components that make it up, and the interior volume of the suit is roughly equivalent to the size of a small refrigerator, about 5.5 cubic feet. There have been a number of safety concerns over the years due to aging spacesuits.

A latest investigation focuses on the case of an Italian astronaut who nearly drowned in space while performing a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. His team failed him. In fact, they say it was his calm demeanor that likely saved his life after his hull filled with water. In 2022, NASA temporarily suspended all spacewalks following another incident in which an astronaut's helmet filled with water. We are starting to see some performance degradation, some components need to be replaced. So on the space station, we're really looking very, very closely at the performance of the EMUs while they're still in orbit.

Meanwhile, these new suits for this particular water failure in the hull, the new designs are designed in a way that that failure mechanism cannot occur. Inventory issues are also a problem. In 2019, NASA was forced to cancel what would have been the first all-female spacewalk on the International Space Station because the agency did not have the appropriate spacesuit sizes available for both astronauts. At the beginning of human space exploration, spacewalks were custom-made. With the beginning of the space shuttle program, the idea arose to abandon the custom sizing system and opt for small, medium and large models. That worked for a while, but as our astronaut corps becomes more and more diverse, the sizes no longer work.

The NASA Office of Inspector General also noted that of the original 18 Primary Life Support System units, only 11 remain in NASA's inventory to support the ISS program, and only four of these units are actually in the ISS at any given time for astronauts to use during spacewalks. . These are suits that were originally designed not to be repaired in space, but to be repaired here on Earth because they were dependent on the space shuttle. So now we're changing the goal because they have to keep them up there. And astronauts are the only ones who can repair and maintain them.

So the number is very, very minimal. The Portable Life Support System, or PLSS, resembles a bulky backpack and is one of the two main components of the spacesuit, or EMU. The PLSS houses a variety of components that perform functions necessary to keep an astronaut alive in space, including providing oxygen, maintaining body temperature, and removing carbon dioxide buildup from the spacesuit. The second important component is the Pressure Garment System, or PGS, which is the white garment that surrounds the astronauts. Its main goal is to maintain adequate pressure around astronauts' bodies, keep them alive in the vacuum of space, and protect them from orbital debris.

Underneath the PGS, astronauts don a liquid cooling and ventilation garment through which cold water flows to help regulate body temperature. The new suit designs follow a similar suit structure but are modernized. There are simply normal problems, what we call obsolescence. Certain parts we simply can't get anymore. And so we're building a new suit so we can start using new components, take advantage of all the new technologies that we have available now that just weren't available almost 50 years ago. Under the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services, or xEVA, contract, NASA is providing Collins and Axiom, along with several of their industry partners, up to $3.5 billion through 2034.

Axiom won the first contract of 228, 5 million dollars to design the suits that will be used. during NASA's Artemis lunar missions, and Collins won the second $97.2 million contract to design and develop a new generation of suits for the International Space Station. In addition to manufacturing the spacesuits, Collins and Axiom will be tasked with providing maintenance and parts to keep the suits in working condition, as well as conducting training and operational support for NASA personnel. The beauty of this contract is that the functional requirements for these two suits are very, very similar. So at any given time, we could ask either of those contractors to actually start working on the other, what we call platforms.

And we also have what we call an access clause in the contract, which means that if another company comes into play and has the ability to compete, we can put them in the contract and allow them to compete on work orders as well. Kearney says continued competition helps incentivize contractors to stay on cost and schedule and ultimately helps keep expenses down for the government. In addition to fiscal support, NASA also provided vendors with access to data from the organization's own suit development efforts through its xEMU project. What we basically did was we took that design and made it available to the industry because we invested a lot of work and taxpayer money into developing that system.

And so, when the industry came along and proposed the Artemis suits, they were able to use any of the data we had available from the xEMU development effort. Axiom Space did not give CNBC a preview of its spacesuit designs ahead of a public reveal. To design this new spacesuit, Collins Aerospace is working with its partner ILC Dover and Oceaneering. Collins, part of aerospace and defense giant Raytheon Technologies, is responsible for the life support system, while ILC Dover is responsible for designing the pressure garment. Oceaneering will handle vehicle and spacesuit interface capabilities. The companies have a long history of working with NASA.

In fact, we were selected to design, develop and provide those spacesuits for the Apollo mission, along with our partner, ILC Dover. In fact, we were also selected to design and develop the space shuttle EMU, or Extravehicular Mobility Unit. ILC Dover and Collins also designed the spacesuits currently used by astronauts on the ISS. However, one surprising difference is the weight. The current EMU weighs about 275 pounds on Earth, significantly more than the prototype seen by CNBC. There are other updates too. This helmet is different from the one now used in the EMU. Offers a better range of visibility.

It has protective visors to protect from radiation and glare from the sun. The upper torso is adjustable to best fit crew members and can be adjusted while they are in orbit or performing a mission to help prevent shoulder injuries and make their EVA more comfortable for them. The upper arm is also new to this architecture. Provides better range of motion and lower torque than current EMU. Ferl says that while the current EMU fits the 5th to 95th percentile of astronauts, this new suit is designed to fit the 1st to 99th percentile of astronauts using fewer parts.

As a result, 30% less hardware needs to be launched into space, which means lower launch costs and less crew training time. Another big improvement in this new generation of suits is their greater mobility and range of motion. Things like standing up. You really have to find the angles to rotate your body, but it's definitely something we couldn't do before at EMU. Extended range of motion becomes particularly important for planetary exploration, although Collins' contract with NASA calls for manufacturing spacesuits for the International Space Station. The company and its partners are designing the suit with

future

planetary missions in mind, such as trips to Mars and the Moon.

For something like the Moon or Mars, definitely the less restriction you have in your lower body, the better. Being able to catch yourself if you start to fall is a huge plus, especially with all the dust issues. That is why good stabilization of mobility is important. One of the biggest technological challenges to returning to the moon is dust. Dust particles, which have a talcum-like consistency, seep through any fabric, so the fabric must be coated or resistant against intrusion of dust particles. Many of the lessons learned from Apollo need to be applied and incorporated, i.e. increased mobility, reduced mass and increased connectivity for astronauts.

They need a better ability to see what's happening with their suits and communicate with each other. Because as we continue to move further and further away from Earth, all of that capability is going to have to be truly autonomous. Crew members must be able to operate somewhat independently of Earth. Another thing suit makers must consider is the amount of time astronauts will spend on missions. When we think about some of those longer missions, some of the other aspects that we've incorporated are really just the maintainability, the ability to do maintenance at lower levels and allow the work to be done at the destination.

That is why we have incorporated modularity and open architecture. So as new technologies are introduced, they can be incorporated into the suit. Under the stipulations of the contract, NASA has asked Axiom to deliver the suits for its mission to the moon Artemis by August 2025, while delivery of the Collins spacesuits is scheduled for 2026. Before being used by the astronauts in themissions, the suits must undergo extensive testing. We require crew members to perform pressure garment testing to ensure they meet mobility requirements. And then we also need to test what we call relevant environments. So that could be a thermal vacuum chamber.

It could be in the NBL. This could actually be an in-orbit test of a space station. Since NASA purchases its suits from Collins and Axiom as a service, suppliers can also make additional suits for non-NASA customers. Although Collins did not reveal the names of any of its other clients, the company says it is talking to between 8 and 10 companies that are interested in its spacesuit services. The new clients we are looking at are not just the current group of commercial space clients. There are countries looking to get involved in space that were not able to participate in the past, and as space becomes commercialized and more affordable, those countries now have the opportunity to intervene.

Romero also predicts that the design of these new spacesuits will continue to evolve to adapt to the new use cases of its broader customer base. Nowadays we use it for maintenance and repair, very little for experiential activities where you go out and do space tourism. That's not really part of EVA today, but it will probably become part of EVA in the

future

. Future programs will have more interaction with robotics, so our suit must be in a position to be able to communicate with robotic systems and be able to operate safely around a robot. And it could be a big business.

The space tourism market is expected to reach $4 billion by 2030. NASA is also looking beyond commercial companies for ideas for future spacesuits. In 2020, Pablo de León and his team at the University of North Dakota Space Flight Laboratory won a $750,000 NASA grant to develop a new 3D-printed spacesuit prototype for Mars and beyond. De Leon has worked on several NASA spacesuit projects in the past, but says this one is a little different. Some of the advantages will be, firstly, repeatable manufacturing. The second will be that you will be able to scan the body and then build a suit that will be designed specifically for that particular astronaut.

And the third is that once our space flights move further away from Earth and we go to, say, Mars, for example. We're more than a year away from our planet, and if we need a replacement, say, a glove, a boot, any other part of the spacesuit, you know, we're a year away from getting that replacement. So what if you can build a machine that assembles your suits and take that machine to Mars? De León adds that exploring the surface of the Moon and Mars will likely mean that astronauts will use spacesuits much more frequently. Returning to the moon will require us to explore almost every day or every other day.

Same for Mars. Space suits, I think they strike a chord with people simply because they have a very human element to them. It's exciting to work on something so critical that keeps crew members alive and safe. I know that it is a great responsibility that we feel every day when we make design decisions. Yes, it's really exciting. It comes equipped with labs, a gym, bedrooms, two bathrooms and the view is literally out of this world. Liftoff of the proton rocket and the Zarya control module. The first segments of the International Space Station were launched in 1998, and since 2000, the ISS has continuously hosted a rotating group of astronauts from 19 countries.

About 400 kilometers above Earth, the International Space Station occupies an area known as Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, and houses the only laboratory available for long-duration microgravity research. This research has been instrumental in a number of scientific advances, including creating more efficient water filtration systems and exploring new ways to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer. But it's starting to show its age. Astronauts today launched a very complicated series of spacewalks to repair a cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station. Space is a hostile environment and in recent years we have seen small leaks appear inside the space station.

These are not life-threatening. It's nothing serious, but it is an indication that the useful life of the International Space Station could be coming to an end. Currently, the International Space Station is approved to operate at least until December 2024, with our agreements with international partners. However, as we are actively working to continue doing science and research, we understand that at some point it will reach the end of its useful life. But NASA probably won't build the next space station. Instead, the agency will rely on technology from outside companies. Some, like Colorado-based Sierra Space, are on track to build their own commercial space station.

So here we are inside our vital elements. It is almost 30 feet in diameter. We have it divided into three decks. The space station is packed right now. There is no room, there is no capacity. So starting with a large volume unit and then being able to build a station from multiple elements allows you to greatly expand the capacity of your space station, not only for NASA astronauts and international astronauts, but also for activities commercial such as manufacturing. Right now, we just don't have the space to do those things. As space enters the commercial era, here's what a new International Space Station could look like.

In recent years, NASA has increasingly relied on outside companies to complete tasks that were traditionally reserved for the government agency. Under its Commercial Resupply Services program, NASA contracts with SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to send cargo resupply missions to the ISS. Last year, SpaceX made history by becoming the first private sector company to fly NASA astronauts to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Boeing also has a contract as part of the program, but is still conducting uncrewed testing. The commercial crew and commercial resupply programs are largely considered a success for NASA. Last year, the agency estimated that the Commercial Crew Program saved the government between $20 and $30 billion.

Since SpaceX and Boeing each designed their own spacecraft under the contract, NASA had the added benefit of having a backup in case something happened to one of the vehicles. This has proven successful, as Boeing has struggled to get its spacecraft certified for human flight. NASA now hopes to replicate the success of its commercial crew and cargo programs with the Commercial LEO Destinations project. As part of the project, NASA plans to award up to $400 million in total to up to four companies to begin development of private space stations. Covering only part of the cost of developing the station would save NASA a lot of money.

The ISS cost $150 billion to build, with the United States shouldering the lion's share of that bill, ahead of its partners Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. NASA also spends about $4 billion a year to operate the ISS. Developing new markets and new technologies is very expensive and the government is often primarily responsible for making those things happen. We have done this in LEO, so we hope to save money by moving to this model. Several private companies are already on track to launch private space stations. One of the companies at the forefront of creating a commercial space station is Houston-based Axiom Space.

In fact, back in 2020, NASA awarded the company a $140 million contract to provide at least one habitable module to connect the International Space Station. Axiom Space plans to start with four modules. The first two will be crew quarters that will be equipped with infotainment systems and huge windows with views of Earth. A space will also be reserved for research and technological development projects. The third module will be geared strictly toward research and manufacturing, and the fourth will be a solar array so that Axiom's modules can detach and operate independently of the ISS when it eventually retires. Before that, we will get power from the ISS, but we will fly with our own solar panels.

In the fourth module we will have our own airlock to be able to carry out space walks. And then once we separate from the ISS, we'll have the ability to continue adding to our station really indefinitely. And we envision being able to add custom modules for customers, that we could build an entire module that's specific to a particular customer's research or manufacturing needs. Funding for its new space station will also likely come from Axiom's private astronaut missions. Axiom has an agreement with SpaceX to use the company's Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to fly a total of four crewed missions to the ISS, starting in January 2022.

Although Axiom does not make public the price of its private missions , a Flying Axiom is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars, with NASA paying SpaceX about $55 million per seat to fly its astronauts to the space station. But Axiom is confident it can build a station that is much cheaper than the $150 billion NASA spent on the ISS. We think we need about $1.2 billion or so to build all four modules, and we're on track to do that. One of the ways Axiom has been able to reduce the cost of its space station is by utilizing technologies from other industries.

Our battery technology is very similar to electric vehicle battery technology. The computer chip in your iPhone, say an iPhone X or later, is very, very similar to the chip we'll use as our computer. Axiom Space plans to launch its first module in 2024 and its fourth module towards the end of 2027. Sierra Space is another company that has been working on building a commercial space station. This is just a mockup of how we could divide part of the space. So here we have put up walls and some basic curtains. We have some examples of crew quarters here. Some of these could be used, storage cupboards could be used for hygiene, space for brushing teeth, personal time and certainly bathroom space is also required.

Since 2017, Sierra Space has been developing an inflatable structure it calls Life Habitat. Originally, it was designed to be a habitat that could take four astronauts basically from lunar orbit to Mars, essentially designed for a thousand-day mission. Since then, Sierra Space has worked to adapt the design to also function as a habitat for the surface of Mars or the Moon, in addition to acting as a commercial free-floating station in low Earth orbit. CNBC saw a mockup of the Life Habitat at the Kennedy Space Center, where it is being tested. The structure is one-third the volume of the International Space Station and spans 27 feet in both diameter and length.

The model we visited only had two floors, but the final version will have three. We had astronauts evaluating the space and the design. One of the things they mentioned is that you can get trapped in this space. So because we are so large, we have to be aware of the fact that we have to make sure that there are supports and means so that if a crew member is inside this large space, they can grab onto something and move on their own. different spaces within the habitat. The structure is intended to be inflated in space after launch.

There were around 40 missions to build the space station. We can have an operational space station in two missions. Our living habitat, because it expands once we put it into orbit, we can get a lot of volume in there very, very quickly. So it's a pretty significant savings in both time and money compared to what we did on the space station. Sierra Space is also developing its own transport vehicle called Dream Chaser. When talking about the $3 billion to $4 billion a year it costs to operate the Space Station, one of the most important parts is transportation. And that's where our Dream Chaser comes into play.

We have a reusable spacecraft that we can use a minimum of 15 times. So we're reducing the cost of that. The price of launch vehicles is falling. We are taking advantage of that. So you have to reduce the cost of transportation and you have to reduce the cost of operations. Initially, Sierra Space believes its largest market will come fromNASA and the space agencies of other countries that want to conduct research in zero gravity. But in the future, the company hopes to supplement that revenue stream with more business activities, such as manufacturing in space tourism and even film and television production.

Sierra Space says the initial elements of its space station will be in orbit in 2026 or 2027. The race is on for private sector companies to launch a commercial space station before the ISS retires, likely within a decade. Both Axiom Space and Sierra Space say they are confident they can have an operational space station up and running in time. Another aerospace company, Nanoracks, plans to have its first private space stations up and running by 2024. But instead of building an entirely new structure, Nanoracks plans to recycle spent rocket upper stages and transform them into research stations. But as with any space project, deadlines change often.

Just take the commercial crew program. The original goal of the program was to send astronauts to the ISS by 2017, but early funding cuts and a series of failed tests delayed the launch until 2020, and not having a station completed in time could mean real problems for NASA. We retired the International Space Station without having commercial space stations ready. There is going to be a gap in capabilities. And NASA has already experienced that gap. After the agency ended the shuttle program in 2011, NASA was forced to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets to launch its astronauts to the International Space Station, and the United States paid Russia a tidy sum, more than 90 million dollars per seat.

When SpaceX stepped in in 2020, that cost dropped to $55 million per seat. One of the things holding back this effort that could contribute to a gap in space station capabilities is the lack of funding that Congress has given NASA to launch this commercial space station and commercial operations in orbit. low terrestrial In fiscal years 2020 and 2021, NASA requested $150 million for commercial low-Earth orbit development but only received $15 million and $17 million, respectively. In July, the House granted NASA $45 million for commercial development of Leo, less than half of what the organization had requested. Trading companies can also expect competition from other countries.

It is a race to establish a permanent presence in low Earth orbit and on the Moon, and as of today, China appears to be winning that particular race. Tonight's launch is the country's first crewed flight in nearly five years, sending three astronauts to the space station it is building as it seeks to become a major space power by 2030. Russia is also planning its own space station. Serving government clients like NASA may be a springboard to reviving the

economy

for commercial companies, but a larger private market will likely be the key to their long-term success and potentially their biggest source of revenue.

NASA provides the money, but the money that NASA provides is totally insufficient for us to do this. So we wouldn't do this or invest in ourselves if we didn't believe in that market. We truly believe that manufacturing will be the real game changer. There have been some really interesting demonstrations on ice where people have done experiments in an airplane and developed a fiber optic cable that has a transmission length 100 times longer, or found ways to bioprint perfect retinal implants. But if it was successful, then what? You know, there was no place to manufacture it at scale.

And so by building a commercial space station and a commercial destination, we now have the ability to build things to scale and manufacture things to scale and help customers do that, including building an entire module specifically for a customer to do that kind of thing. of manufacturing. As for NASA, not having to invest in a space station will free up money for other projects. We've had all these years of success on the ISS, and NASA now wants to set our sights on the Moon and Mars and other elements of exploration and deliver this area of ​​space to the commercial market.

Just a couple of years ago, it seemed like space mining was inevitable. Analysts, technology visionaries and even renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that space mining was going to be big business. The first billionaire that will exist will be the person who exploits the natural resources of asteroids. In a 2017 note to investors, a Goldman Sachs analyst wrote: "Space mining could be more realistic than perceived. A single asteroid the size of a football field could contain between $25 billion and $50 billion in platinum". Space mining companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, backed by companies like Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, emerged to reap the anticipated benefits.

After all, the holy grail of asteroids known as 16 Psyche was worth an estimated $10,000 trillion. But fast forward to 2022, both planetary resources and deep space industries have been acquired by companies that have nothing to do with space mining. And humanity has yet to commercially exploit even a single asteroid. But that hasn't stopped a new generation of startups from trying. AstroForge's mission, obviously, is to leave Earth with a vehicle, go to an asteroid, mine it for rare earth elements, and then return it to Earth to sell. TransAstra was founded with the mission of working towards the vision of harnessing the resources of space, especially asteroids, for the betterment of humanity.

There is enough material in asteroids to support a population of one billion people. Until now, the closest we have come to mining an asteroid has been prospecting missions. In October 2020, NASA collected a small sample of dust from the asteroid Bennu as part of its OSIRIS-REx mission. The sample won't return until 2023, but during the mission, scientists were surprised to learn that Bennu's surface was not as solid as predicted. In December 2020, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency brought back a sample from an asteroid known as Ryugu as part of its Hayabusa2 mission to collect the sample. The agency fired a projectile at the asteroid and collected the flying material.

Like Bennu, scientists discovered that Ryugu also had a rubble pile surface. Although these recent advances from companies like NASA and JAXA have provided useful information about the composition of asteroids, space mining has not yet become a commercial activity. So what's taking you so long? For one thing, space mining is a long-term endeavor and venture capitalists didn't necessarily have the patience to support it. If we were to develop a large-scale asteroid mining vehicle today, we would need a few hundred million dollars to do it through commercial processes. It would be difficult to convince the investment community that this is the right thing to do.

Take NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which is expected to take seven years to complete and cost more than $1 billion, all to recover a handful of asteroid material and planetary resources. Despite its million-dollar investment, the closest the company came to asteroid mining was the launch of a satellite to explore future targets. In fact, the mining of celestial objects has become a motif of satire showing corporate greed. As seen in this clip from the 2021 Netflix movie Don't Look Up. This comet hurtling toward us from deep space actually contains at least $32 trillion of these technology-critical materials. I'm sorry, is that why you aborted this whole mission?

It's because you're trying to extract rare minerals from the comet. We should wait. Others say that mining precious metals to sell on Earth never made much economic sense. If we look at platinum. The production cost of platinum is around $1,100, or even more. And the price per ounce of platinum is less than $1,000. So it means that mining the land is not profitable at the moment. When analysts made their predictions, they looked at the amount of precious metals and materials in asteroids, and did not look at the economics of the industries. In the current

economy

and in the economy of the near future, the next few years.

There is no point in chasing precious metals and asteroids. And the reason is that the cost of getting to and from asteroids is so high that it far exceeds the value of anything that can be exploited from asteroids. When we think of space mining, precious metals probably come to mind. But in fact, asteroids may contain other materials, which in the short term could be even more valuable. There is the extraction of materials in space for use in space, and then there is the return to Earth, the ideas back to Earth. They have to compete with land markets for those same materials.

That would be a big challenge and may happen someday, but most likely it will be in the distant future. But in the short term, materials are extracted for use in space. The number one element is water. There are certain types of asteroids that have hydrated minerals. We can process those minerals to release water. Our best use of water is actually to process it into rocket propellant. And then, with the rocket booster we will be able to move through space more easily. We don't have to launch all of our propellant from Earth. Gabor says he agrees that when it comes to exploiting the cosmos, we should look beyond precious metals.

Short term. We should focus on helium and water, helium because it is not readily available on Earth and water because it has potential use in space. A lawyer by profession, she spent several years working with the European Space Agency and decided to focus her legal experience on advising new space companies. She is now an advisor to an Australian startup that aims to extract water and helium three from the moon, an isotope of helium that has applications in national security medicine and cryogenics. The recent helium shortage has forced some research laboratories to suspend their projects and raised national security concerns.

Knowing what we can extract is one thing, but figuring out how to extract it is another. Given the new data from NASA and JAXA, scientists and companies have had to come up with new ways to mine asteroids. An older way of thinking, landing on and anchoring to asteroids and drilling or excavating, is a plan that may now seem less viable given what we have learned about asteroids. Scientists usually classify asteroids by their type of composition. Type C, or carbonaceous, asteroids are the most common and are made of clay and silicate rocks and contain water. S-type, or stony, asteroids are the second most common and are generally made up of a metallic mixture of nickel, iron, and magnesium silicate.

Finally, M-type, or metallic, asteroids represent the rest of the known asteroids and are believed to be made primarily of nickel-iron. What we've learned is that most asteroids are piles of debris, as opposed to one big solid piece of material the size of a mountain. Building on this new understanding of asteroids, TransAstra has been working with Dreier to develop a technology it calls optical mining. The optical mining process we have invented involves, in the first step, capturing the asteroid in an enclosure, what we call a capture bag. Asteroids normally spin because that's what they do in space.

Our spacecraft spin matches the asteroid, flies the bag over the asteroid, captures it, and tightens it tightly, so we have positive control. Now, once we contain the asteroid in our capture bag, our solar reflectors redirect that concentrated sunlight into the capture bag, and we use it to drill holes in the asteroid and heat the material and expel the volatiles, water and rest. gases, minerals. And then we can capture those volatiles in an ice trap. TransAstra is initially focusing on extracting water to make rocket propellant, which Sercel says will enable low-cost space travel. But eventually the company plans to harvest everything on the periodic table.

We have calculated that a single transasteroid mining vehicle, which we call Honeybee, can fly to an asteroid and bring back about 100 tons of water and other ice in a single mission. It's worth about a billion dollars. And we know this because we have a contract to deliver 100 tons of ice into geostationary orbit from a publicly traded company. But that kind of revenue is still a long way off. TransAstra is funded by around 5 milliondollars in NASA grants and contracts, and several million in venture funding. To stay on the sidelines, Sercel says TransAstra is focusing on developing its intellectual property little by little, using technology that will eventually be incorporated into its mining missions to meet existing market needs.

One of the business opportunities is traffic management. With our Sutter Telescope technology, we can turn a small, inexpensive commercial telescope into a powerful instrument that can observe space traffic and orbital debris the size of a toaster oven all the way to the orbit of the Moon. TransAstra has already deployed its telescope system at two observatories in the US, and the technology is currently used for asteroid prospecting. Eventually, TransAstra also plans to launch its telescope technology into space to see deeper into the universe. Likewise, today there is a thriving orbital logistics business to deliver satellites to their orbital destinations from where rockets drop them off.

To do this, TransAstra is developing an orbital transfer vehicle known as Workerbee. Its body can also be used as an asteroid mining vehicle. But the company has not yet operationalized any of its technologies in space. Still, Sercel says TransAstra is already making a small amount of revenue from initial contracts for its satellite towing services and has contributed more than half a million of its Sutter Telescope technology in the form of NASA R&D grants. . Our plan is to generate positive revenue every step of the way, as we build the company and use these near-term businesses to mature the technology.

And then while you're doing that, you'll have all the pieces in place to go out and start mining asteroids. Our mining process consists of three stages. We have to vaporize the material. So we're going to take an asteroid and essentially vaporize it into a cloud of atoms. And then we're going to ionize it. So each of us will take that cloud and positively charge all the atoms. And then once we have a bunch of positively charged atoms, we can classify them. Astroforge is another early-stage company trying to make space mining a reality. Founded in 2022 by a former SpaceX engineer and a former Virgin Galactic engineer, Astroforge still believes there is money to be made mining asteroids for precious metals.

We have a limited amount of rare earth elements, specifically platinum group metals. These are industrial metals that are used in everyday things: the mobile phone, cancer drugs, catalytic converters and we are running out of them. The only way to access more of these is to leave the world. Astroforge plans to mine and refine these materials in space and bring them to Earth to sell. The key technology we are developing is our mineral processing system. So that system consists of the excavation subsystem that moves the material from the asteroid to the spacecraft. And then there's that refinery piece that actually extracts the valuable material and removes all the unnecessary material that we can't actually sell on Earth.

To keep costs down. Astroforge will connect its refining payload to available satellites and launch them on SpaceX rockets. There are quite a few companies that manufacture what is known as a satellite bus. This is what would normally be considered a satellite, the type of box with solar panels and a propulsion system attached to it. So for us, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel there. The people before us, Planetary Resources and DSI, had to buy entire vehicles. They had to build much, much larger and much more expensive satellites, which required a huge injection of capital. And I think that was the ultimate downfall of both companies.

SpaceX really allowed many companies to get started in the aerospace world, basically because of the lower cost to access space. So now we can take advantage of that and really focus on just the technology part. Ashford says it has raised $23 million in venture capital funding and plans to conduct several test missions before launching its first official mining mission in 2025. The company is targeting near-Earth asteroids, and a single mission takes about two years. Our first mission is to send a refinery, so we are going to take an artificial asteroid. We are exactly concentrations that we have created.

So we're going to show that we can extract platinum from this in zero gravity in a vacuum. Mission number two for us is a prospecting mission. This is where we leave for an asteroid. We make sure we can get to an asteroid, our spacecraft can last two years, and we can take high-resolution images to make sure the surface is what we expect it to be. The third mission, we now introduce our extraction arm to that mission. We'll go out, take a sample of the asteroid, bring it back to Earth, and study it on Earth to understand exactly what the concentrations of that asteroid are.

Our fourth mission is where we put all those pieces together. We send out our mission with the excavation arm. We set up our processing facilities and repeat those steps to obtain platinum. Like the planetary resources and deep space industries before them, today's asteroid mining companies face a number of challenges. The first is the uncertainty arising from the lack of established international law governing space mining. Currently, most space activities are governed by the Outer Space Treaty, which was established during the Cold War. One of the treaty's principles prohibits the appropriation by individual nations of any celestial body, such as the moon or asteroids, and requires that any space exploration in use benefit all of humanity.

When it comes to space mining, the entire discussion revolves around whether the Outer Space Treaty allows or prohibits space mining. One interpretation is that what we should do with the mined minerals is share the benefit that is derived from them, and it is not clear whether the benefits should be for the wealth that arises from the extraction of the space mineral, or whether mining can provide some with some scientific knowledge. And the benefit would simply be sharing scientific knowledge. In the absence of an established international law governing space mining, some countries have taken it upon themselves to establish their own.

The Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, passed by the Obama administration in 2015, drew attention when it gave companies property rights over the materials they extracted from asteroids. Although it stopped short of granting companies ownership of the asteroids themselves. Since then, Luxembourg, Japan and the United Arab Emirates have established their own space mining laws. But Schmitt says not having an international law for space mining could be enough to deter some companies from trying to mine the cosmos. He believes that national laws are not enough for companies to overcome the legal uncertainty they observe, especially when it comes to ownership.

If they invest money and go to space and extract something, and the discussion about ownership is not clear, they have no certainty that what they are going to extract will be theirs and they will have complete freedom to use the material. for whatever they want. But Sercel says there is already precedent for this. There are limited spaces in geostationary orbit where you can place satellites. Once you have the assigned slot and the satellite, other countries and other companies can't go there and mess with it. So we are sure that when we go to an asteroid, capture it in a bag and extract its resources, we will own those resources.

Another challenge is even more basic. Decide which asteroids to target for mining first. Before carrying out their own missions, all early-stage mining companies must rely on researchers' existing observational data and the hope that the asteroids they have selected contain the minerals they seek. The most challenging aspect of asteroid mining is actually the asteroid itself. We have a lot of evidence, observations and scientific data, but we don't actually have a lot of true knowledge, which means that there have only been a handful of missions that have actually gone to the asteroid. So you can design a perfect system.

You can control all these things. You can control the technological part, you can control the operations part, but you can't control what the asteroid is until you get there. If companies somehow manage to extract the materials they are looking for, the next obstacle will be selling them. In theory, an influx of precious metals introduced into Earth's commodity market could be enough to collapse it. But Astroforge says this is unlikely. When looking at the supply and demand curve for platinum group metals, the total market capitalization of these metals is measured at around $60 billion. We are talking about recovering 80 million dollars per mission.

So for us it would take quite a few missions to really greatly affect the supply and demand curve as we move forward. For now, commercial space mining remains highly speculative, with companies just beginning to test their business and technological plans. Still, experts believe that some form of asteroid mining will eventually take place. The question is when. I think we will be able to mine an asteroid in the next decade. At a minimum, this will be done as a proof of concept for a mining process, but possibly also include an actual sale of, probably water, to then process into propellant.

In terms of the timeline for asteroid mining, for us the biggest issue is funding. So it depends on how quickly we can scale the business to these other companies and then get hands-on engineering experience, operating systems that have all the components of an asteroid mining system. But we could launch a mission to an asteroid within five to seven years. If we have a developed and functioning space manufacturing industry, then I can imagine that asteroid mining will become a valuable option, but it is not a ten year period. I think we're going to explode into space maybe in 20 or 25 years.