Space resources refer to material or non-material resources beyond Earth’s atmosphere that can be developed and utilized by humans to bring economic and other benefits. On January 29, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation announced that during the ’15th Five-Year Plan’ period, it will conduct feasibility studies for the ‘Tiangong Kaiwu’ major special project, building comprehensive experimental and ground support systems for space resource development, with key breakthroughs focused on small celestial body resource exploration, intelligent autonomous mining, low-cost transfer transportation, and in-orbit processing technologies. This signifies that China’s space resource development is moving from conceptual planning to systematic engineering layout, expected to drive space resource development toward low-cost, sustainable, and large-scale directions.
Why should we devote tremendous effort to developing and utilizing space resources? ‘The variety, reserves, and value of space resources far exceed Earth’s proven reserves; developing interstellar resources is humanity’s inevitable choice,’ said Wang Yunmin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He cited examples: celestial bodies like the Moon, asteroids, and Mars contain enormous quantities of scarce strategic resources such as platinum group metals and rare earths. The Moon’s helium-3 reserves are estimated at over 1 million tons – a million times that of Earth. Furthermore, space mining will drive breakthroughs across robotics, artificial intelligence, new materials, and other high-tech fields. These technological dividends will benefit terrestrial industries, drive a new industrial revolution, give rise to entirely new industries like space manufacturing and orbital services, and open up trillion-yuan markets.
Wang Yunmin stated that as Earth’s shallow resources increasingly fail to meet human development needs, turning to deep underground, deep sea, and deep space for resources becomes inevitable. However, deep Earth mining faces extreme environmental challenges including high ground stress, high temperatures, deep shafts, high osmotic pressure, and mining disturbances. Deep-sea mining must contend with ultra-high pressure, low-temperature corrosion, low visibility, and communication difficulties. ‘Due to the unique nature of its resource endowment, space mining is actually easier to achieve than extremely deep Earth resource extraction, and it will drive the development of numerous cutting-edge theories, technologies, and equipment, becoming the ultimate strategic high ground for future resources.’
