Sarah Scoles

This article was originally published by Undark Magazine.
In April 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave launched into space. Its goal: to get ready to mine asteroids. Although the mission, backed by a company called AstroForge, ran into problems, it’s part of a new wave of activity by would-be asteroid miners hoping to cash in on cosmic resources.

UFOs can be fun. See: the official sign on the road near Area 51, which dubs it the Extraterrestrial Highway. UFOs can be weird. See: E.T. phoning home with a MacGyvered communication device. But UFOs are also a national-security story, a government-contracting story, a conspiracy-culture story, and a technoscientific story. They are a human story.