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Mining Asteroids For Volatile Resources: An Experimental Demonstration Of Extraction And Recovery, Egboche Christopher Unobe
Mining Asteroids For Volatile Resources: An Experimental Demonstration Of Extraction And Recovery, Egboche Christopher Unobe
Masters Theses
"Gaseous compounds trapped within carbonaceous asteroids may prove to be important targets for prospective space miners in the near-term. Volatile release is from hydrated, hydroxylated and carbonated phases present, making such bodies attractive as feedstock for the production of H2O, CO2 and simple organic compounds. A source of these species in orbit provides an opportunity to locally produce space-craft propellant and other life-support gases through the application of In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU).
For this study, an experimental vacuum system was modified and used to test the technical validity of radiatively heating asteroid simulants to extract contained gaseous …