**5.2 Near moon commercial activities example: near-earth-asteroid mining**

The Near-Earth-Asteroids (NEAs) approaching Earth are monitored by NASA [37], their weekly entry into the 0.05 AU Earth boundary are recorded and accounted for. *Several NEOs per week are found*, *with diameters reaching 100+ meters for some!* The common content of such asteroid in *high-quality* Fe, Ni, Pt, Co, etc. makes them attractive astromining targets in term of energy spent to reach a resource. Considering that 0.05 AU is about 7.5 Millions of km, and the Moon is at 0.4 Millions of km from Earth, with its low gravity and slingshot effect relative to Earth. There is energy-based reason to consider the Moon as a NEA mining base. Blair [38] already identified the impact of NEO asteroid mining on the Platinum market and Earth supply streams, LL chondrites already found in NEOs are indeed rich in Pt, at a rate of 32 + k USD per kg, the economics of reaching to space for astromining are getting vastly efficient as time passes and Earth mining pressure increases.

As an example, the NEO asteroid 2011 UW 158 (**Figure 10**) made the news in July 2015 when it passed near Earth at 2.4 millions of km. It is 452 m x 1011 m and

**Figure 10.** *NEA 2011UW 158, carrying 90 million tons of platinum [39].*

was estimated to carry 90 Millions of tons of Platinum (2022 value: 2.9 Trillions of USD). In recent news, JPL jointly with NASA announced the completion of the payload assembly in April 2021 for a mission to Psyche, a peculiar asteroid since it exhibits all the characteristics of the remnants of a nickel-iron rocky planet core ([40]; NASA [41]). Here again besides the obvious scientific treasure trove about inner rocky planet origins, formation, geomagnetism and actual composition, there is the question of the purity of the ore found there, and the potential for in situ extraction or redirection to another location for exploitation.

As an example of advanced ISRU, metal 3D-printing technology matures in micro-gravity (i.e. [42]), with its Lithography-based Metal Manufacturing (LMM), it is rather straightforward to envisage the use of high-quality metal ore into such machine, in space or on a planetoid, for infrastructure creation, whether spacefaring designs or settlement on-the-spot adapted constructions. Obvious questions of heating power source will come to mind, but there are already such solutions rolling on six wheels on the surface of Mars, it would require some scaling, but it is in the realm of feasible and transportable.
