Deep Space Mining cost $ 27 billion, or half the price of a possible Australian gas terminal to Ceres - a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt that lies

Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The IAU has adopted two themes for naming surface features on Ceres: agricultural deities for craters and agricultural festivals for everything else. As of September 2016, the IAU has approved names for 111 geological features on Ceres: craters, montes, catenae, rupēs, plana, tholi, planitiae, fossae and sulci. In July 2018, NASA released a comparison of physical features found on Ceres with similar ones present on Earth. Piazzi, named after Giuseppe Piazzi, the discoverer of Ceres, is a dark region southwest of Dantu crater in ground-based images that was named before Dawn arrived at Ceres.

Deep Space Mining cost $ 27 billion, or half the price of a possible Australian gas terminal

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - According to a study presented to a board of business executives and NASA scientists, it would cost less to get a mine on the moon or an asteroid to work than building the world's largest gas terminal.

A mission to Ceres, a dwarf planet that is 257 million miles from the Sun and the size of Texas, can cost about $ 27 billion. The expenditures include 10 missile launches for the transportation of equipment, the extraction of metals and water as well as the construction of an in-orbit facility for the processing of raw materials.

The costs are borne by graduate merchants from the Australian University of New South Wales, who also work on the space-saving economics in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In comparison, for Australia's largest single resource development - the Gorgon liquefied natural gas plant of Chevron Corp. - A price of about 54 billion US dollars expected.

Getting investors to embrace the grand vision that humanity has a future in the stars is a high bar.

"We should not over-drink the Kool-Aid," said Rene Fradet, Deputy Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Technical and Scientific Directorate in Pasadena, California, and speaker at the Sydney Off-Earth Mining Forum on Thursday. "Investors are out there, but they need to know what the risk and the return are," he said over the phone.

Crucially, advocates no longer intend to deliver metals to Earth to replenish finite resources. The cost of a round trip is considered uneconomic. Instead, the focus is on providing materials for space industries to advance exploration and eventual colonization of Mars and beyond.

Mining on the moon would be a relative gain with investments of around $ 9 billion, the study said. Capturing parts of near-Earth asteroids, the target of companies already developing space-depleting programs, could only cost $ 492 million.

Proponents insist that space depletion will eventually become a trillion-dollar industry that supplies metals and water for rocket habitats and propellants in a market initially led by space exploration programs and satellite operators.

"Even if you found gold out there, I would leave it out there," said Julian Malnic, a board member of Moffett Field, Deep Space Industries, Inc., California, which plans to mine and process asteroids in space. "There is a real economy to build from and the materials to build from."

Proof that the space-degrading technology is feasible is provided by programs such as NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, Fradet said. The key step was to build a credible business model that could convince skeptics in the mining industry, he said.

"It's still not a profitable venture," said Jeff Coulton, a lecturer at the School of Accounting at UNSW, whose students did the space-depleting calculations and also spoke at the forum hosted by the university. "It could be a profitable venture over the next 20 to 30 to 50 years," he said.

Other costs are even lower. According to Planetary Resources Inc., an asteroid mining company backed by Google billionaires Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, any mission to mine an asteroid can only cost between $ 50 and $ 100 million.

Planetary Resources has been discussing its plans with mining executives' chief executive officers and exploration directors, president and chief engineer Chris Lewicki said over the phone and refused to name the companies. The miners' approach is, "How can we get involved so we do not lag behind the evolving time," he said.

Planetary Resources has been discussing its plans with mining executives' chief executive officers and exploration directors, president and chief engineer Chris Lewicki said over the phone and refused to name the companies. The miners' approach is, "How can we get involved so we do not lag behind the evolving time," he said.

Top executives are not dismissive. Sam Walsh, CEO of the Rio Tinto Group, said in February that space depletion raises interesting questions and that his company will be there if it can be developed.

Ceres

Ceres or - in the nomenclature for asteroids - Ceres is the smallest of the IAU classified as a dwarf planet celestial bodies and the largest object in the asteroid belt with a mean equatorial diameter of 964 km.

The Ceres is named after the Roman goddess of agriculture. It was discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi as the first minor planet. In the first half century after its discovery, it was classified as a planet, later as an asteroid; since 2006 it is counted to the new group of dwarf planets. Her astronomical symbol is a stylized sickle: Astronomical symbol of Ceres.

The size of Ceres has been given since the 1960s, depending on the measurement method between 650 and 1000 km. Only through observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Dawn spacecraft from 2015 to 2018 is it well known.

Ceres has no moon, but with the space probe Dawn an now inactive artificial satellite.

Discovery and object classification

Even Johannes Kepler suspected a planet in the "gap" between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and the discovery of the Titius Bode series around 1770 confirmed such assumptions. Founded by the astronomers Franz Xaver of Zach and Johann Hieronymus Schroeter "Himmelpolizey" made since 1800, therefore, specifically on the search for the assumed planet. The area around the ecliptic was divided into 24 sections. Each of these sections was assigned to an observatory, which was to search for the planet. The Sicilian Piazzi, who initially considered the object to be a comet, succeeded in discovering it during the review of a star catalog on New Year's Eve in 1801.

After Piazzi lost sight of the new celestial body due to illness, Carl Friedrich Gauss was able to make a good prediction of his position with the aid of his newly developed method of determining the orbit. This was able to find by Zach Ceres on December 7, 1801 again. By the way, Gauss's calculations proved to be extremely fruitful for almost all branches of science, since he first applied the method of least squares to the equation of adjustment for them. As it turned out, Ceres actually moved around the sun exactly at the distance between Mars and Jupiter predicted by the Titius Bode series.

Ceres was - as the 1781 discovered Uranus - considered as a planet, bringing the number of planets in the solar system initially increased to eight. It was only when the number of heavenly bodies found between Mars and Jupiter rose rapidly around 1850 that the names "little planets", "planets" or "asteroids" became known for these objects, which meant that Ceres lost its status as a planet. A redefinition of the planetary concept became necessary at the beginning of the 21st century due to the discovery of several celestial bodies in the Pluto class. A decision of the IAU of 24 August 2006 classified Ceres as (134340) Pluto, (136199) Eris, (136472) Makemake and (136108) Haumea as a dwarf planet.

designation

Piazzi first named the celestial bodies he discovered: Ceres Ferdinandea, Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and patron saint of Sicily, and in honor of King Ferdinand IV of Naples, who had fled to Palermo in 1798. In Germany, Johann Elert Bode suggested the name Juno (which was then picked up for the third asteroid, Juno); for a short time also the name Hera was in use (later awarded to (103) Hera). Von Zach made it clear, however, that "Prof. Piazzi has now baptized his own child, for which he apparently has the right as the first discoverer." As the honoring of King Ferdinand encountered resistance in other nations, this name portion was soon dropped.

In 1803, two years after the discovery of Ceres, the chemical element cerium was discovered and named after this new celestial body.

orbit

Ceres moves on an ellipse in the middle of the asteroid belt, at a mean distance of 2.77 AU, in 1681 days around the Sun, which is about 4.6 years. The perihelion distance is 2.56 AU, the aphtheal distance 2.98 AU. The orbit is inclined by 10.6 ° to the ecliptic, the orbital eccentricity is 0.076.

The synodic period of Ceres is 467 days. During the opposition, it is between 1.59 AU and 2.00 AU away from Earth and achieves an apparent brightness of up to 6.6 mag; so it is just below the visibility threshold with the naked eye. Ceres can therefore already be found with binoculars or a small telescope.

nature

Size and mass

Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system and the largest and most massive object in the asteroid belt. For the mass, a value of 9.39 × 1020 kg is given, which corresponds to the 6360th part of the earth mass. Ceres thus has about 3.6 times the mass of the nearest minor planet in the asteroid belt, (4) Vesta, and comprises about 25% of the total mass of this belt.

Observations with the NASA spacecraft Dawn have shown that Ceres has the shape of a slightly flattened ellipsoid of revolution with an equatorial diameter of 964 km and a polar diameter of 892 km. The surface of Ceres is thus about 2,850,000 km2. The rotation period is 9:04:27 hours and the calculated average density is 2.077 ± 0.036 g / cm3. [3] [15] Measurements of the spacecraft Dawn showed a slightly higher value of 2.16 g / cm3.

surface

Ceres has a dark carbon-rich surface with an albedo of 0.09. Radar observations have shown that the entire surface appears to be evenly covered by powdery regolith. Outstanding or isolated surface features were first observed in 1995 by UV observations with the Hubble Space Telescope: a dark spot with a diameter of about 250 km, which was named in honor of the discoverer of Ceres "Piazzi". Further observations with Hubble in 2003 and 2004 enabled the creation of a map showing numerous minor surface features in addition to "Piazzi" and a striking, bright spot.

Further details were provided in 2015 by the US space probe Dawn, which revealed densely sown impact craters. The largest named crater named Kerwan has a mean diameter of 280 km and is located at the equator. The wall of the Occator crater rises almost 2,000 meters in some places in the sky, inside the crater are some very bright spots, with the center with Cerealia Facula is the brightest area of the entire celestial body. There is also another group of spots further to the east called Vinalia Faculae. A mystery is the lack of large craters; One of the explanations is the assumption of an elastic-tough surface. At least the large oval basin Vendimia Planitia could be the unobtrusive remnant of a very old, larger impact structure. Vendimia Planitia has a diameter of up to 750 km and extends to the south of the equator in the crater Kerwan. The topographic elevation changes on Ceres total up to 15 kilometers.

The bright spots within Occator and elsewhere already detected by Hubble are probably salt deposits. Infrared spectral analysis indicates that the bright spots are mostly sodium carbonate with small amounts of silicate minerals and ammonium carbonate or chloride.

The Dawn mission also uncovered the dome-shaped cryovolcan Ahuna Mons, which rises 4,000 meters near the equator and consists of a mixture of chlorides, minerals and water ice. The average temperature at the equator is about -110 ° C.

In the cartography for Ceres, the zero meridian passes through the center of the 400-meter-wide Kait crater and divides the surface into a Kerwan hemisphere and an Occator hemisphere.

Researchers at the Italian Institute for Astrophysics INAF found through long-term observations that there are seasons on Ceres. Thus, it was observed that the amount of ice-containing area changed at certain points: Within half a year, the ice surface in Juling crater increased from 3.6 to 5.5 km 2. In addition, landslides were observed, presumably due to melting ice sheets. The scientists also suspect volcanic activity below the surface.

composition

Measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that it is a differentiated dwarf planet with a rocky core and a mantle and crust of lighter minerals and water ice. The differentiation probably goes back to the heat released by the radioactive decay of the aluminum isotope 26Al, which is likely to have formed a coat of liquid water in the early days of the solar system. However, the outer ten kilometers did not melt, but formed a solid crust of ice, while heavy material (silicates, metals) collected in the core. Overall, Ceres should consist of 17 to 27 percent by weight of water. The amount of water on Ceres is estimated to be about five times that of existing freshwater resources on Earth. In addition, it was possible to detect water vapor around Ceres with the help of the Herschel ESA infrared space telescope. The water output is 6 kg / s and takes place in two places on the surface. When Ceres is in its slightly elliptical orbit near the Sun, the release is highest.

The knowledge of the surface could be further refined by Dawn.

An international research group from the Italian Institute for Astrophysics INAF announced in February 2017 that it had found aliphatic organic carbon compounds on Ceres using the space probe Dawn.

Despite the planet-like structure, Ceres did not become a real planet. Presumably, the strong gravitation of neighboring Jupiter prevented Ceres from accumulating enough mass to develop from a planetetal to a large planet.

Dawn Mission

The NASA spacecraft Dawn reached Ceres on March 6, 2015. The primary mission was to map the surface from a high Ceres orbit and ended in July 2015. From July to December 2015, Dawn spiraled up in multiple steps in the secondary mission 380 km; this allows a resolution of 40 meters per pixel. The secondary mission served as a detailed survey of soil chemistry and should end at the end of June 2016. At the beginning of July 2016, NASA approved the financing of the Continuing Observation follow-up mission to gain more information on the development and development of Ceres. Ceres approached the perihelion at that time, reaching it in April 2018, and gained new insights and discoveries through long-term observation. In October 2017, the last extension of the mission was announced until the end of the fuel. Dawn was steered into an elliptical orbit that approached the surface at 200 km altitude closer than before. This orbit kept the probe and collected scientific data until all hydrazine reserves had been used up, and finally ceased operation on November 1, 2018. The last received images are from the 1st of September 2018.