Mining base on double asteroid 90 Antiope
Some day a
it may be worthwhile to mine resources from a distant asteroid, whether for
raw materials for building an orbiting structure (cheaper than rocketing the
materials from Earth's surface) or for some exotic material found only on a
particular asteroid.
This image
is a bird's eye view of a mining settlement on the double asteroid 90
Antiope, located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and
Jupiter. These two asteroids are about the same size--70 miles across--and
orbit around a common center like two ends of a barbell. The gap separating
the two bodies is only about 40 miles. The extremely low surface gravity
would permit the construction of delicate structures, such as the solar
power array silhouetted against the sunny side of the sister asteroid, and
would make it relatively easy to transport mined material off the surface.
|