Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2016

ASTRONAUTICS 41 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2016 I n the back- ground, depic- tion of a collector of asteroidal soil, as envisaged by the private com- pany Deep Space Industries. [DSI] large quantity of elements and chemical compounds. For decades this prospect re- mained just a fantasy as it was not part of the priorities of the various government space agencies. In the new millennium, however, we saw a flourishing of private astronautical companies, some of which, W hen, during the ‘70s of the last century, the astronomers’ inter- est turned towards asteroids, which began to be studied more carefully, it soon became clear that each of these minor bodies of the solar system could be considered a quarry from which extract a