Just last Monday my mom and I went to the University of Toronto.  We went to visit Michael Bazzocchi.  He is a PHD student there and he created his own program there.  He studies aerospace mining.  I saw a lot of wind tunnels (that didn't have a lot to do with my research).  He showed a lot of he stuff he was working on.  I got it all on film and i'm going to post a trailer of it as my vlog.  We talked a lot about different ways that space mining could be possible.
          One thing that I learned that was't in my research is that to mine an asteroids you have to get in earths orbit.  The orbit it goes into has to be strong so it is safe having an asteroid so close to earth.               We also talked about two types of asteroid that people are interested in mining and they are asteroids that contain hydrogen and oxygen and asteroids that contain precious metals like platinum gold etc.
           I also met one of his colleagues.  He was researching space junk.  What he wants to do is somehow detumble ( because space junk spins at a very fast rate) the space junk.  Michael's mission is circulating around how to get the asteroids in orbit and and how we can attach a mining mechanism to it.  

this is a good representation of what I have learned this month.
 http://www.shackletonenergy.com/  

this is an email that I received from Michael Bazzocci a scientist at the university of Toronto that studies outer space mining.


Hi Sophia!

Thank you for your well written and detailed email! I'm glad you reached out to me because your project is literally the focus of much of my research. 

It seems like you have quite the project ahead of you! I have attached a couple interesting websites that might help you get started:

- http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ (NASA -- there are more NASA/ESA sites I can send you if you are interested)

- http://deepspaceindustries.com/  (Private company)

- http://www.shackletonenergy.com/ (Private company)

- http://www.planetaryresources.com/ (Private company)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining (Pretty good overview of the main themes)

You are more than welcome to send me a list of questions or give me a phone call, also, considering that you also need to build a model, you are welcome to visit my lab at the University of Toronto to get some ideas. While we don't have much space mining equipment (most of my research is conceptual and theoretical, less experimental), we do have a few robots, wind tunnels, and a flight simulator.

Good luck with your project and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Michael

blog post #1

This week i have been researching different asteroids that would be ideal for mining.  The 1986DA asteroid is the one that i think would be best for mining.  this asteroid has 90 billion dollars of gold and 5 trillion us dollars worth of platinum.  this profit doses not include the iron and nickle on this asteroid as well.  lots of scientists are interested in the 1986AD.  they are proposing a plan to attach a device to the asteroid and brig it closer so we can mine it.  Michael Bazzocchi and his team are currently working on this and i will be interviewing him.