There’s an urban legend going around since 2006 that says “asteroids used to be planets, but astronomers discovered they exist in a belt so way back in the mid 1800s the astronomers reclassified them as non-planets. For the same reason, Kuiper Belt objects like Pluto should be non-planets because they, too, are in a belt.” […]
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I’m sure this is not interesting to most people, but I wanted to get it onto the Internet for those who become interested in Pluto’s planethood during the flyby and want more details. Determining the definition of a planet is really a scientific question. The first step in science is not writing down a hypothesis […]
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When people say Pluto isn’t a planet, they often say it is an icy body and therefore it must be a comet, not a planet. But are icy worlds simply comets? Or can real planets be made of ice? And what is the difference between ice and rock, anyway? Let’s take a look! Stars with […]
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I just got back from the Granular Matter in Low Gravity conference in Erlangen, Germany hosted by the Friedrich-Alexander Universität. It was a fun week and it reminded me why I love working with granular materials in space. Why Granular Matter is Important in Space Granular matter is simply any material that is a collection […]
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In near-Earth space there are three places to mine. The first is the Earth itself. Some of the challenges to mining only on the Earth are (1) too much mining on Earth messes up habitats for life, (2) some of the best resources on Earth are already becoming scarce so their costs are rising, and […]
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Mining Space Water There are several companies that plan to mine asteroids and several more that plan to mine the Moon. In addition, Elon Musk wants to start a colony on Mars, and that will necessitate the mining of Mars. Furthermore, government space agencies plan to do missions to Mars and those missions will be […]
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For near-term mining in space, we can mine the Moon or we can mine Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). This series of posts discusses asteroids. What type of asteroid is best for space mining? As we saw previously, asteroids can be completely different from one another in their composition because of the different ways they formed. […]
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Space mining is critically important to the future of human civilization. This series of posts discusses the best type of asteroid to bring back to Earth to mine. The previous post (Part 1) discussed why the asteroids formed near Jupiter and why their chemistry is different than the chemistry of Earth. This post (part 2) […]
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Several space mining companies plan to mine asteroids, and they want to bring back to Earth either the entire asteroid or just the part that they mined from it. Either way, obtaining resources in space will be revolutionary for exploration and for the advancement of human civilization into space, so bringing back an asteroid for […]
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The previous post discussed retrieving asteroids and what size we want to bring back to Earth. This post discusses the location and trajectory of an asteroid we could retrieve. Families of Asteroids The vast majority of the asteroids are in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Why? Because (we surmise) the gravitational “stirring” […]