Asteroid blasting and moon dust mitigation: You can major in that

Angel Abbud-Madrid embraced the space mania of the ’60s – he drank it down with Tang. At age 8, he watched the American moonwalk from his living room in Mexico, relieved that aliens didn’t intervene. 

Through horn-rimmed glasses, Dr. Abbud-Madrid is still looking up. So are his students at the Colorado School of Mines – including an aspiring asteroid-blaster, moon-dust mitigators, and an entrepreneur with a NASA contract already in hand. All want careers in sustaining life in the obsidian expanse.

“It’s a unique moment in history to do it right,” says Dr. Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources.

Living off the land in space requires dreamers on Earth. Drawing on terrestrial lessons it dares not repeat – pillaged civilizations, environmental ruin – this Colorado public research university is rehearsing for a reality in the next frontier. Unlike settlers of old who stampeded this state with gold pans and picks, Mines students use far-out foresight: How should humans harness resources in space? 

“If we’re going to be a space-faring society in the future, it needs to be worked on,” says Jerry Sanders of the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate. 

Doing this right, says Dr. Abbud-Madrid and students at Mines, involves calculating a range of concerns – from logistical to ethical – ahead of a galactic gold rush. 

Space-age “orediggers”

Swaddled by the foothills of the Rockies, the city of Golden was founded in 1859 and named after a miner of the same surname. A decade after California’s gold rush began, Colorado’s brought more settlers scrambling West, hastening Indigenous displacement.

Established in the 1870s, Mines is known for engineering and other STEM degrees. NASA reports providing $32 million in grants and cooperative agreements over the past two decades to the school, whose 7,100 students are nicknamed “orediggers.”

Several U.S. colleges offer space-related studies (nearby University of Colorado Boulder is known for launching the careers of several astronauts). Yet Mines, say experts interviewed about it, is believed to be the first to offer advanced degrees in the multidisciplinary field of space resources.

Given the institution’s reputation for mining and operations research, its “focus in space resources sort of is logical,” says Scott Pace, director of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute. While the field is still small, “they’re it, at the moment.”

Courses began in 2017 with an online program the following year. Most of the 128 graduate students, from five continents, study virtually. A new space-mining minor for undergrads began this fall. 

Tim Broslav is one of Golden’s postmodern pioneers. The Ph.D. student is part of a team figuring out how – in layperson’s terms – to blast water out of asteroids, those ancient space rocks that typically orbit the sun.

At the university lab, a lightbulb (substitute for solar light) illuminates a chamber holding a foot-long chunk of a rocklike homemade asteroid. Ideally, the heat from concentrated light stresses the asteroid surface to the point of breaking, producing water or other gases. Such “volatiles” could eventually be turned into rocket fuel or drinking water. 

A complex project, yes. But at its core is a search for sustainability: It’s costly to schlep staples like water and fuel beyond Earth’s atmosphere; so why not get them in space?

“Space is going to push us to be even more resourceful,” says an upbeat Dr. Abbud-Madrid on an August tour of school facilities.

Space resources can be material or intangible. Think metals, minerals, ice. But also solar power, vacuum, distance. The collection, extraction, and use of resources in space is a concept called in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU.  

“What we want to do is exactly what we have done on Earth for centuries,” he says. “We also have had hundreds of years to learn what not to do. I mean here, we hurt entire civilizations just by going after resources.”

From rampant deforestation to rivers running orange with toxic runoff from mines, history is likely to weigh on the consciences of ISRU advocates. Because many of their aims are still theoretical, they have time to troubleshoot potential harm.  

During mining activities more than a century ago, “there was not a recognition that people would be living in those locations 100 years later,” says Jeff Graves, director of the Inactive Mine Reclamation Program at the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety and a Mines graduate.

He’s never seen “Star Trek”

Dr. Abbud-Madrid stoops to the pavement outside the lab and scoops up a palmful of the moon. The chalk-white “lunar” dust is actually a substitute from Greenland. It’s part of what lines a lunar test bed nearby, mimicking the moon’s abrasive terrain.

The wheels of a rover prototype have traversed that simulated soil, practice for a 2022 debut on the moon. The Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) lunar rover – a small, robotic prospector – belongs to the Golden startup Lunar Outpost, whose chief executive officer Justin Cyrus is pursuing a space-resources Ph.D. at Mines. 

His company, one of four NASA asked to collect lunar materials on its behalf on the moon in the near future, scored a 10-cent check from the space agency this summer – a tenth of its $1 contract. The collaboration will mark the first transfer of space-resource ownership from private companies to the U.S. government – an important precedent while regulatory frameworks mature.

Leveraging space resources – from extracting Martian oxygen to recycling space junk for construction – is critical to “enhance and sustain” human exploration on the moon, says Mr. Sanders, system capability lead for ISRU at NASA. The agency’s Artemis program aims to land the first woman as well as the first person of color on the pearly satellite, and learn lessons there that can be applied to Mars.

NASA also seeks to support the space economy while enriching innovation back on Earth, he adds. For instance, how might extracting resources in space advance safety and efficiency for mining on Earth?   

Dr. Abbud-Madrid, trained as a mechanical and electrical engineer, worked at a gold and silver mine after college. In the U.S. for his graduate career, he began to study how combustion works in microgravity. That led him to research at Mines, where he helped develop fire extinguishers that work on the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit. NASA honored him in 2004 for his contributions to space flight. 

Despite his out-of-this world pursuits, Dr. Abbud-Madrid says he prefers to read current research tethered to reality, otherwise history books. He’s been reading about a Spanish queen who greenlighted an exploration in 1492 – and chewing on Christopher Columbus’ current legacy as a villain.

The professor says he’s not typically attracted to sci-fi, their plots “too far away.” Voice lowered in an empty lecture hall in August, he shares a secret: “I have never seen a ‘Star Trek’ episode.”

Ethics first, launch later 

As Ben Thrift reaches gloved hands into a box filled with liquid nitrogen, icy vapor rises to tickle his beard. At the lab, he’s freezing a sample of icy regolith simulant: “fake moon dirt with ice in it,” he translates later.

His graduate research is helping develop a probing instrument meant for the moon, part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services that supports the Artemis program. The penetrometer – a space version of a terrestrial engineering tool – is slated for a 2023 uncrewed mission to the lunar south pole, a region dimpled with icy craters. 

Are there negative side effects to excavating in space? At least there isn’t lunar life – yet discovered – to bother, says Curtis Purrington, another Ph.D. student nearby. Still, he’s thinking through how to keep his activities from contaminating areas miles away. That could interfere with the research of others. 

“We’re trying to address the ethical questions before we even show up,” Mr. Purrington says. “Hopefully before we ever break ground, we have really good, solid environmental laws already in place.”

The former F-16 crew chief has dreamed of space mining for over a decade. “And then when you talk to other people, they’re like, ‘OK, nerd.’”

When he began studying at Mines in 2018, he says, “Suddenly it was like, Oh my God. I found my people.”

Asked whether he sees himself working in space, Mr. Purrington says he’d prefer robots go first, as expected. After all, “humans are high-maintenance.” 

Engineering physics sophomore Parmida Mahdavi has a different take, tied to one of her biggest professional goals: solving space pollution.

“I want to be able to mitigate that from Earth,” says Ms. Mahdavi, who’s especially concerned about debris from combustions or collisions between celestial bodies and human-made machines. She interned with a Mines team on a NASA challenge focused on moon-dust mitigation. Mines, one of seven finalist teams, was honored for “best collaboration and systems engineering” in November. (Washington State University scored the top honor.)

“Once I can help my own planet as much as I can, then maybe I can travel somewhere else,” she says. “But you’ve got to fix your own home before you move houses.” 

Not just a dream anymore

The lecture hall is packed for the first fall class of “Introduction to Space Exploration & Resources.” The commander, Dr. Abbud-Madrid, prompts self-reflection from his crew.

Dreamers, thinkers, and doers have all helped advance space innovation, he says, pacing at the front. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that you belong to only one category.”

Sitting back after class wearing a baseball cap backward, Haydn Sandstrom is fired up. Sci-fi video games and “2001: A Space Odyssey” inspired the mining engineering student’s otherworldly interests. Tonight, the possibility of a space gig has leaped light-years closer to reality.

“It’s not just a dream anymore,” says the junior interested in the space-mining minor.

Though he values teaching, Dr. Abbud-Madrid admits that staking claims in a new field keeps him up some nights. He doubts he’ll journey beyond Earth in his lifetime, but his ideas already have. Those fire extinguishers he helped design are still aboard the International Space Station.

“It is protecting the life of the astronauts, and that’s an amazing feeling,” he says outside the lab. As his arm extends toward the sky, he peers past his hand. Slowly, he traces an imagined orbit some 250 miles above.