Here's how scientists plan to trap asteroids in Earth's orbit and extract them from resources

Scientists have found a way to use the Earth's atmosphere as a "glove of capture" for small asteroids flying over our planet.

Recognized as the next industry worth billions of dollars, asteroid mining has the potential to unlock access to an abundance of valuable resources including iron, nickel, carbon, cobalt, platinum , rhodium and iridium. Inquisitr Reported previously.

Currently trapped inside the rocks of space, these vast reserves of precious minerals could be harvested and transported to Earth to solve the crisis of scarcity of resources of the planet.

But how can we get our hands on a mature asteroid for mining? Well, a team of scientists from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, led by a Ph.D. Student Minghu Tan thinks they have the answer.

In a new study recently published in the journal Acta Astronautica, the researchers argue that they have found a way to use the atmosphere of our own planet to stop near-Earth asteroids and conveniently imprison them as they fly over our cosmic borders.

Their proposed method is based on a principle called aerobic – the same technique used by spacecraft when they are preparing to land, whether on Earth or on an extraterrestrial planet, explains the New York Post.

In a nutshell, aerobics is a drag maneuver that allows spacecraft to take advantage of the atmosphere of a planet and use its resistance to slow down enough for gravity to drag them to the surface to land. This is the same method that will be used by the NASA InSight lander to land on Mars from November 26th. Inquisitr reported earlier this year.

The same principle could be applied to slow down small asteroids as they pass through our planet and keep them in the orbit of the Earth, where they could be exploited for platinum or water. This would make our atmosphere a "giant capture glove for resource-rich space rocks," note Science Magazine.

Scientists want to use Earth to "catch" asteroids for mining https://t.co/E6h9K9A999 pic.twitter.com/uqMJmWNgIV

– New York Post (@nypost) September 6, 2018

"This article studies the concept of capturing near-Earth asteroids in orbits around the Earth using aerobrushing," says the new study, which also presents two asteroid capture strategies based on the principle of the aérobroyage.

"These are called single-pulse capture and two-pulse capture, corresponding to two approaches to raising the perigee height of the asteroid's orbit captured after the aerobray maneuver," the authors write in their article. .

To ensure that aerobics do not turn against us by placing asteroids on a collision course with Earth, the team suggests that only space rocks less than 30 meters (98 feet) be considered candidates for the new method.

In their opinion, "aerobics can in principle be used to capture candidate asteroids around the Earth with, in some cases, extremely low energy requirements." Just an asteroid small enough to be qualified to the procedure and from an unmanned spacecraft on the trajectory and corrects its trajectory in case the space rock would move away one way or another or would get too close for comfort.

Once the asteroids are safely trapped in the Earth's orbit and mining operations can begin, their resources could be transported to the International Space Station, where they could be processed and used for future space missions. For example, the team points out that water extracted from asteroids could be divided into hydrogen and oxygen and used as fuel.

Yet not everyone is convinced that the idea is achievable. Ingo Mueller-Wodarg, a physicist at Imperial College London involved in the study of planetary atmospheres, points out that the use of aerobrushing to trap asteroids is accompanied by a set of risks.

"The risk is that the asteroid will have an irregular shape and, as a result, there will be a couple that starts to spin and become uncontrollable," says Mueller-Wodarg. "When we do aerobics with satellites, we carefully shoot small rockets to keep them [them] on track and compensate for such an oscillation. "

Another problem is the composition of the candidate asteroids, since space rocks with a high iron content would be difficult to slow down or would be more likely to crash into the earth's atmosphere, where they might not burn completely.

Tan is also aware of the dangers of such an operation and suggests that the method be tested on a specifically chosen target, an asteroid dubbed VL1 2005 and that corresponds perfectly to size and speed. According to the team, this rock is small enough for aerobics to work as expected and also has the right speed to be easily redirected if something goes wrong.