OPERATIONS
centuries-old exploration of terrestrial resources ,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid , Director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden , Colorado .
Abbud-Madrid believes resource discovery will be followed by drilling , excavation , extraction and processing operations to utilize those resources .
“ For the moon , sufficient prospecting — through remote sensing — and identification of valuable resources , such as oxygen and hydrogen for in-situ applications , has been done to date ,” Abbud- Madrid said . Based on these findings , he said , the necessary technologies and prototypes to collect and extract these elements have been developed and tested on terrestrial analog sites .
“ Thus , the time has come to demonstrate these systems on the surface of the moon ,” Abbud-Madrid concluded .
In the U . S ., one of the companies expecting to assist in Moon mining is Texas-based Shackleton Energy Company ( SEC ).
The company plans to mine the vast reserves of water ice and convert it into rocket propellant in the form of hydrogen and oxygen , which would then be sold to space partners in low Earth orbit . According to chief executive officer , Dale Tietz , the plan is to build a “ gas station in space ” where rocket propellant will be sold at prices significantly lower than the cost of sending fuel from Earth .
The race to the moon The race for mining the Moon is on and China is currently making the most headway . Having already successfully touched down on the Moon via its Jade Rabbit lander in December 2013 , China became the first nation to successfully make a soft landing there since the 1970s .
In 2010 , President Obama announced the administration ’ s decision to cancel NASA ’ s plan to return to the Moon in favor of the new and ambitious Asteroid Redirect Mission . This entails a robotic mission to grab an asteroid in outer space , bring it to the moon and place it into lunar orbit . Once there , NASA will send astronauts to explore it .
“ The USA has been a little arrogant in thinking that it can lead the world to the moon , and then it pulled the rug out from under the world and said , ‘ Oh now let ’ s go to an asteroid !’
12 March 2015