Abstrakt
Asteroids are not only of scientific interest but will probably become a source of valuable ore for space industry in the future or a replacement for resources lacking on Earth. Key questions related to this ambition are as follows: What is currently known about the feasibility of asteroid prospecting? What strategy should be adopted for economic mining in the future? Is this idea still only a subject for academic discussion, or are we ready to take the first real steps? Determining the composition of asteroids is one specific issue and currently very difficult.
Remote observations from Earth provide insufficient detail, and the cost of spacecraft flybys or probe landings is very high. An interesting alternative method for asteroidal compositional analysis that is advantageous with respect to mission duration, economy, and technical feasibility is the systematic spectroscopic study of meteors of asteroidal origin with a CubeSat satellite swarm.
Another promising method for inferring asteroidal properties is by high-resolution mass spectrometry of interplanetary dust particles. The basic technologies needed to support these schemes require further development, as do the necessary data analysis algorithms, calibrating standards, and methods for computing the solar system source region of observed meteors.