Asteroid Mining to Sustain a Mars Colony: A Logistics Point of View

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the feasibility of asteroid mining as a supply chain to provide metals for a sustainable Mars colony, considering spacecraft limits, resource utilization, and optimization of mission parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-objective optimization framework for designing asteroid mining supply chains tailored for Mars colonization missions.

Findings

Optimized supply chains meet mission ΔV constraints.

Produced metals and propellant quantities are quantified for various mining rates.

Schedules for asteroid visits are generated within spacecraft capabilities.

Abstract

Asteroid mining can become an enabling technology to establish a sustainable manned colony on Mars, which requires metallic materials more often than they are readily available in shipments from Earth. This paper describes a feasibility study of a supply chain that delivers metals extracted from metallic asteroids to Mars. The asteroids are selected to respect the $\Delta V$ limits imposed by up-to-date spacecraft. The study is conducted with reference to the state of the art in space transportation technologies and in-situ resource utilization. A possibility for mining on carbonaceous asteroids to produce the propellant required for return trips is also taken into account. Different supply chains are computed through a multi-objective optimization routine that considers the mission $\Delta V$, the mass of extracted metals and the mass of propellant produced on the asteroids. Schedules to visit the asteroids within reach are obtained and the total mass of the delivered material is evaluated for various mining rates. Finally, the use of the metallic material to build habitats and rovers on the Martian soil through additive manufacturing is discussed.