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Asteroid mining has been proposed as an approach to complement Earth-basedsupplies of rare earth metals and supplying resources in space, such as water.Existing research on asteroid mining has mainly looked into its economicviability, technological feasibility, cartography of asteroids, and legalaspects. More recently, potential environmental benefits for asteroid mininghave been considered. However, no quantitative estimate of these benefits hasbeen given. This paper attempts to determine if and under which conditionsasteroid mining would have environmental benefits, compared to eitherEarth-based mining or launching equipment and resources into space. We focus ontwo cases: Water supply to cis-lunar orbit and platinum mining. First, weconduct a state-of-the-art of current environmental life cycle assessment forthe space domain and platinum mining. Second, a first order environmental lifecycle assessment is conducted, including goal and scope definition, inventoryanalysis, and impact assessment. We compare water supply to cis-lunar orbitwith and without asteroid mining and go on to compare terrestrial withspace-based platinum mining. The results indicate that asteroid water miningwould have environmental benefits, as soon as the amount of water supplied viamining is larger than the mass of the spacecraft used for mining. For platinummining, we find that by comparing the operations phase of terrestrial and spacemining, space mining would have a lower environmental impact, if the spacecraftis able to return between 0.3 to 7% of its mass in platinum to Earth, assuming100% primary platinum or 100% secondary platinum, respectively. For futurework, we propose a more detailed analysis, based on a more precise inventoryand a larger system boundary, including the production of the launcher andspacecraft.

Exploring Potential Environmental Benefits of Asteroid Mining