SpaceTIS Asteroid Mining Robotic Spacecraft
Description
SpaceTIS is developing a robotic spacecraft and an in-space processing center for asteroid mining in collaboration with NASA. The spacecraft is designed to capture asteroids and extract water, iron, nickel, gold, platinum, rhodium, and other precious metals without excavation. A solar concentrator enables distillation of tens of tonnes of water at low cost. For iron-rich asteroids, heated pressurized CO converts iron into volatile carbonyls for easy collection and purification; similar methods are applied for nickel, cobalt, gold, platinum, and rhodium extraction. The spacecraft also supports recovery of mined resources in the in-space processing center or from permanently shadowed lunar craters.
