Mining that’s out of this world

Humans could be living on Mars by the year 2050, as long as we can develop a new way of mining in extreme environment with more precise approach.

That is the view of Professor Serkan Saydam from UNSW Sydney.

For any settlements in space to be viable, we need to use the resources that exist there; as using local resources is much cheaper than transporting material all the way from Earth.

The most important resource is water, which is crucial for drinking and growing food. Water can also be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, with the hydrogen then available to be used as fuel. Regolith, the dust and small rocks on the Moon’s surface, can be used a cement material to build shelters for people living there.

But the challenges posed by off-earth mining are enormous, and there’s a lot of technological progress required, say Professor Andrew Dempster and Professor Serkan Saydam.

As director and deputy director of UNSW’s Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER), they are leading off-Earth mining research in Australia.

Space mining needs to operate in extreme environments, such as low gravity, low pressure, high radiation, and high temperatures.

For those reasons, any systems operating in space need to be autonomous, with minimum human interaction. But mining systems on Earth are not fully autonomous yet, so significant developments will need to be made.

One solution is remote operation, where machinery could be controlled from a base on the Moon or even from Earth. This is similar to how some mining operations are managed in Australia. However, sending large equipment into space is costly, so smaller, more precise machines will be needed - “small is the new big”. These machines will also need to have more power than is currently required on Earth in order to break the rocks.

UNSW's primary contribution to the international effort in space resources is one of approach, says Professor Dempster.

“While most researchers around the world have approached the problem from a "space" point of view, UNSW has always approached it from a mining engineering point of view,” he says.

“Our research at UNSW is focused on reducing the risk perceived by investors in space resources ventures.

“UNSW research is based on water extraction (for instance) being done commercially, and that function being provided by an entity requiring significant commercial investment.

“That has led to unique contributions, for the moon, Mars and asteroids, towards prospecting asteroid probe mission design, prospecting rover mission design, mine design, regolith characterisation, processing techniques, business cases, regulation of lunar real estate, environmental considerations, and other areas where risk needs to be reduced before significant progress can be made.”