Asteroid Mining: Mineral Resources in Undifferentiated Bodies from the Chemical Composition of Carbonaceous Chondrites

Humanity has been mining Earth deposits for decades in order to extract tiny amounts of economically valuable metals and thereby, producing huge natural devastations of our planet. Recently, asteroids have grabbed our attention since they are fascinating objects carrying the hints of Solar System origin and, at the same time, containing large amounts of valuable resources including platinum group metals (Mining the sky: untold riches form the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets, Reading, 1996), iron, nickel, rare earth elements (REE), and water (Mining the sky: untold riches form the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets, Reading, 1996; The technical and economic feasibility of mining the Near Earth Asteroids. PHD thesis, 1997). At present, 14,036 near-Earth objects (NEOs) are known to travel around an orbit close to the Earth, from which 1684 are considered potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). In this scenario, may not be surprising that some private companies start considering asteroid mining. In the present study, we report the bulk rare-earth element (REEs, La-Lu) compositions of 38 carbonaceous chondrites as well as 2 R-chondrites, including 5 falls and 35 finds, by using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) technique. The CI-chondrite-normalized REE patterns show enormous Ce anomalies and large LREE enrichments never described before, attributed to the small sample size and terrestrial contamination. We have also found the characteristic Tm anomalies described by some authors (Acta 163:234–261, 2015; Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 176:1–17, 2016) attributed to type II CAIs. We conclude that from the point of view of abundances, REEs are not worth mining yet for PGEs may be reasonable. In any case, the current inequality between supply and demand of rare earths is a real problem that will result in large price instabilities for many sectors of the economy, also having negative effects in new technologies and development. Consequently, we envision that space exploration will be a way to find the new resources required to sustain market economy over longer timescales.