By: inkl

efore humans send probes to space to mine for precious metals on asteroids, they could find vast quantities of minerals like platinum on the Moon’s craters, a new study suggests.

Minerals like platinum-group metals, including platinum, palladium, and rhodium, could be scattered across the nearly 6,500 craters made by asteroids on the Moon, according to the study published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

Mining of space minerals has become increasingly popular in recent years, with several ventures aiming to profit from the potentially trillion-dollar industry.

Scientists and investors interested in the idea claim it could benefit humanity as there is only finite accessible metal in our planet's crust.

“One eighth of the iron in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater than all of the Earth’s currently estimated iron ore reserves, and it may well suffice for centuries,” a study co-authored by astrophysicist Martin Elvis explains.

Now, researchers say the Moon craters could be home to trillions of dollars worth of precious metals and could be mined instead of sending probes to asteroids orbiting the Sun, researchers say.

"These values are one to two orders of magnitude larger than the number of ore-bearing near-Earth asteroids,” they write.

Mining missions planned for the Moon could also provide additional benefits, as technology could be developed in parallel for extracting water from the lunar surface for further space exploration.

In the new study, scientists surveyed asteroid impact craters on the Moon to estimate the amount of platinum group metals likely to be found on the lunar surface.

While most of the asteroids crashing onto the Moon tend to get vaporised, significant parts of such space rocks can survive under some conditions, scientists say.

Large, complex craters on the Moon could be locations where such asteroid remnants may be found.

Scientists estimated the number of large lunar craters that could be the result of an impact by such asteroids, and came up with a figure of several thousand.

They say about 6,500 lunar craters larger than 1km (0.62 miles) could contain platinum group metals.

“For a more conservative threshold of 5 km, we estimate craters with asteroid remnants that contain significant amounts of platinum group metals,” researchers added.

Narrowing the search down even further, they say there could be about 40 very large craters over 19 km across where precious metal ores are likely concentrated.

The findings, according to researchers, suggest “it may be more advantageous, and hence more profitable, to mine asteroids that have impacted the Moon rather than the ones that are in orbit”.