Is NASA Mining Asteroids? We Asked a NASA Expert

NASA had plans and ongoing research related to asteroid mining, but no active asteroid mining operations were underway. The idea of mining asteroids for valuable resources like precious metals and water has been explored for several years, and NASA has been studying the feasibility and potential benefits of such missions.

One of the most well-known NASA missions related to asteroid exploration and potential resource utilization is the OSIRIS-REx mission, which aimed to study and collect a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. This mission was primarily focused on scientific research, but it also had implications for understanding the composition of asteroids, which could be relevant to future mining efforts.