Technosignature Research Portal

Asteroids, comets and other smaller planetary bodies represent a potential source of raw materials for civilizations which have outgrown the natural resources of their home planet. Elements such as nickel, platinum and cobalt can be harvested for manufacturing purposes, while water ice can be used to support extraplanetary habitats or power spacecraft.

Detectability

• Unusual chemical indicators (particularly the absence of harvested elements) could be an indicator of asteroid mining operations, as could atypical debris, although such inferences require a level of resolution that may be impractical.
• Because raw materials could be used to facilitate other potential technosignatures, such as Dyson spheres and other megatructures, artificial satellites and space elevators, detectability of asteroid mining may by definition require multivariate detection.

Research

21-Sep-2022		Opportunities for Technosignature Science in the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey	Jacob Haqq-Misra, Reza Ashtari, James Benford, Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, Niklas A. Döbler, Wael Farah, Thomas J. Fauchez, Vishal Gajjar, David Grinspoon, Advait Huggahalli, Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, T. Joseph W. Lazio, George Profitiliotis, Evan L. Sneed, Savin Shynu Varghese, Clément Vidal
23-Oct-2020		Contact Inequality -- First Contact Will Likely Be With An Older Civilization	David Kipping, Adam Frank, Caleb Scharf International Journal of Astrobiology
20-Dec-2018		NASA and the Search for Technosignatures: A Report from the NASA Technosignatures Workshop	NASA Technosignatures Workshop
28-Mar-2011		Extrasolar Asteroid Mining as Forensic Evidence for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
1-Dec-2005		Some Speculations on the Construction of Artificial Planets	Mark Hempsell Journal of the British Interplanetary Society

Opportunities for Technosignature Science in the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey (21-Sep-2022)
Contact Inequality -- First Contact Will Likely Be With An Older Civilization David Kipping, Adam Frank, Caleb Scharf (23-Oct-2020) International Journal of Astrobiology
NASA and the Search for Technosignatures: A Report from the NASA Technosignatures Workshop NASA Technosignatures Workshop Participants (20-Dec-2018)
Extrasolar Asteroid Mining as Forensic Evidence for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Duncan Forgan and Martin Elvis (28-Mar-2011)
Some Speculations on the Construction of Artificial Planets Mark Hempsell (1-Dec-2005) Journal of the British Interplanetary Society