Mining has been an ancient way to get valuables from time immemorial, from mining gold, bitumen, coal, diamond, crude oil, to mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and other types of coins. Now, the world is about to move to another type of mining and this time, the mining isn't done on our planet but rather in space, it is called Asteroid mining.
Although, launching to space is very expensive as it takes $10,000 to put a pound of payload in Earth orbit (nasa), but this hasn't stopped humans from looking into how the natural resources around the universe can be harnessed and used to make money. Asteroid mining is going to be a $3.87B industry in 2025 even though asteroid haven't been mined yet but investors have been pulling in resources to see that this industry stands well (statista). It is believed that the first trillionaire will be the person who mines asteroids in space.
Actually Japan was the first country to give asteroid mining a try as a nation. Its Hayabusa 2 spacecraft landed on an asteroid and took samples of it to earth. This began the race for asteroid mining (news scientist). The metals available on asteroids are very important to us as humans, so the asteroid race began.
Why do we need to Mine Asteroids.
Just like asteroid have precious metals like gold, nickel which are metals needed on earth, so do they have asteroid which possesses water which is a very rare commodity in space and cost a lot of money to transport from earth. The ability to mine both types of asteroids, including the C-types is where humans plan to begin business. The water mined from C-types of Asteroids can be extracted and separated into Hydrogen and Oxygen which could be used as fuel for rockets. The water can also be purified and made ready for drinking.