There are probably few better places to cut your teeth as a geologist than Namibia’s Diamond Coast or the Kalahari Copper Belt, still something of a frontier for the red metal. Except maybe the Moon or NEOs.

Sarah-Jane Gill discovered space after training as a geo and working in Namibia’s marine diamond mines and then completing her PhD on the Kalahari Copper Belt.

“It was only during my post-doc that I came across planetary science and realised that there was actual geology in space, and rocks, and that these were similar to what we have on Earth,” she says.

“It was a bit of a revelation for me and I’ve kind of been stuck on space ever since.”

About seven years into her journey, the UK Space Agency’s chief of staff has worked with the United Nations to establish a working group on space resource exploitation and has participated in various meetings with NASA on the Artemis Accords.

A new space race is underway and critical international policy is being formed to guide off-Earth scientific missions, settlement and infrastructure. Gill finds herself in the thick of that action and is also one of a growing number of cross-industry voices trying to foster much closer contact between the terrestrial mineral exploration and mining, and off-Earth science and engineering, communities.

It is a busier intersection than it was even five years ago, characterised by growing knowledge and formative technology exchange. Earth-bound mining and metals supply challenges, geopolitics, rapid technology advances and an increasing appetite for off-world scientific answers are some of the factors expected to fuel more intense collaboration in the years ahead.

“We’re definitely seeing more interest when it comes to the utilisation of space resources,” says Gill, who will speak on a panel probing the topic, “Space mining: From sci-fi to reality?” at the upcoming Resourcing Tomorrow 2024 conference in London.

“We’re also seeing the formation of academic and other consortia that are looking at solutions to some of the challenges around mining off-Earth.

“In the UK there are a few companies who’ve started looking at that. Raising funds for something which is quite speculative and seems quite far off as well has been challenging for those companies.

“The way to frame this in a reasonable way is around utilising resources in space because that's something we can all get our heads around, particularly when those resources are on the Moon, for example, and we’re looking in the future at a space station which would be orbiting the Moon.”

Artemis mission and potentially Chinese-Russian lunar settlement infrastructure are other drivers of future ISRU, or in situ resource utilisation.

“So I would start by looking at use cases for resources in space,” Gill says.

“If we’re looking at a future where we have a vibrant in-orbit servicing and manufacturing ecosystem, we have a circular economy in cislunar space and resources routinely being extracted and used to create propellant for long duration and deep space missions, all of those factors will lead to an environment where the economics will be different to what we see today.

“I think that the changes we’re going to see in the orbital environment and the lunar environment in the next 10 years will dictate a lot of that conversation.

“When it comes to the moon you also, of course, have these massive ethical and legal considerations tied to the utilisation of resources in space. There’s a principle in the Outer Space Treaty which talks about preserving celestial bodies for scientific research. And the Moon is an incredibly rich source of history about the solar system. It has recorded billions of years of history, events that have shaped it and formed it and scarred its surface, and anything that we do to start changing that surface or compromising future scientific endeavours is a challenge.

“And the Moon has cultural significance for a lot of people as well.

“So on the one hand we do need to test new technology somewhere and it makes the most sense to test things on the Moon, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that that then leads to mining on the Moon.”

Gill does see rapid technology development, including now in the mining industry around vehicle autonomy and satellite-driven drone and other surveying, profoundly influencing off-Earth resource identification and extraction including, potentially, on Near-Earth Objects or asteroids further afield.

“Advances in autonomous vehicles, even drone technology, to actually go out and be able to characterise an asteroid to the level of detail that you’d need to be able to go out and mine it are moving a lot faster,” she says.

“Launch is more accessible now as well because it’s cheaper, so you can explore things in different ways.

“On the other side, mining on Earth is getting more expensive. The environmental considerations are becoming more cumbersome but also more important for people.

“So you’ve kind of got costs going up in one area and coming down in another.

“Do I think we're going to get to a point where we’re mining asteroids in the next 10 years? Absolutely. I can definitely see that happening, just not on an industrial scale.

“We’ve only ever managed to bring back very small quantities of material from asteroids.

“These sample-return missions have taken decades to plan and have cost billions to deliver.

“In the future the complexity of these missions is only going to increase as we try to extract more material from extreme environments where the conditions are gruelling. We need highly reliable technology to be able to be able to extract that material and if we want to do it well it should be informed by the very best in mining industry expertise.

“We need the space sector to seek out that expertise when planning missions which cover elements of resource extraction, but equally it is about the mining sector engaging with the space sector to offer expertise and be part of the conversation.

“What we need is for the mining sector to be open to participation, to provide expert advice; to suggest and recommend technologies they already know about that have been tried and tested.

“The tech transfer part, I think, is hugely important. I don’t think it can be overestimated at all.”

While the terrestrial mining industry and its traditional investor base have been reluctant so far to venture too far into ‘exotic’ territories, including new tech realms, and firms floating ISRU or asteroid mining concepts have struggled to engage private investors, Gill thinks increased cooperation between the industries can yield benefits both ways.

“Having a proposition that has been validated by the space sector or a space agency would hopefully provide a level of confidence to the mining sector to support these initiatives in a way that the proposition alone wouldn’t,” she says.

“And the same is true the other way.

“Space companies whose methods have been validated by the mining sector would bring confidence to the sorts of investors they are looking to attract, be they private or government actors.

“When you go to a private investor and you have a proposition and you say, well, actually, this is to support this mining technology being deployed in this way with a space agency, and this government body potentially, it’s a very different conversation.”