Researchers looking forward to build space station inside an asteroid

Where asteroid mining is already in process, scientists are now looking to take a step forward by planning to build a space station inside a giant asteroid.

Drilling in microgravity is a difficult task since exerting force on an asteroid will push one away from it. Researchers from University of Vienna have been inspired from this and are now planning to turn an asteroid into a space station and mine it from the inside out, reported New Scientist.

The team’s research showed that the perfect asteroid to build a space station inside would be made of solid rock and rotating three times per minute. The idea is that it would provide enough centrifugal force to let space miners chisel away at the asteroid from the center outward.

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“If we find an asteroid that’s stable enough, we might not need these aluminum walls or anything, you might just be able to use the entire asteroid as a space station,” one of the researchers Thomas Maindl told New Scientist.

Moreover, Science Alert reported that researchers also suggest that the asteroid’s rocky hull could keep the mining station safe from dangers of being in space such as cosmic ray radiation. However, Maindl himself claims that this idea is far off in becoming a reality.

“The border between science and science fiction here is sort of blurry,” Maindl said. “My gut feeling is that it will be at least 20 years before any asteroid mining happens, let alone something like this.”