The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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New rules would allow the testing needed to build an open-pit mine over the largest hard rock lithium deposit in the U.S. In a unanimous vote, the Board of Environmental Protection has amended Maine's prohibitive mining rules to allow for open-pit excavation of certain clean energy metals. The provisional amendment, still under final consideration, is the refinement of a state law adopted last July intended to restrict mining and processing resources containing polluting sulfi...
Metal Tech News Q&A with Oliver Gunasekara, CEO Impossible Metals. As an entrepreneur and business development executive, Oliver Gunasekara has left his mark on the tech world over the past 30-plus years. His latest project, Impossible Metals, is poised to be a real game-changer in the quest of deep sea mining for minerals critical to clean energy – which can and should maintain equal ESG standards to land-based mining. Rather than dredging the seafloor for precious p...
In 2023 alone, the federal geological survey invested $51M into Earth MRI scans of 35 states as part of a nationwide critical minerals search. From rare earths in Northern Maine to lithium in Southern California and titanium in Florida to 29 critical minerals in Alaska, the United States Geological Survey is investing heavily in strengthening domestic supply chains for the 50 minerals and metals critical to every sector of the American economy. This nationwide search for...
Five years ago, Maine native Mary Freeman and her husband Gary went gem-hunting for tourmaline on their property in the woods of Plumbago Mountain. Instead of the popular semiprecious stone they were seeking, they discovered what appears to be the richest known hard rock lithium deposit in the world – a formation of gigantic lithium-bearing spodumene crystals with an estimated value of $1.5 billion. The timing of their discovery, officially called Plumbago North, is fortuitous...
Arguments against the expense and impracticality of space exploration have been ongoing since before the Apollo missions ever got off the ground. In fact, NASA's budget has hovered between a minute 1% and 0.4% of the total federal budget since the 1970s. Missions fail, lose funding, or fall out of favor between presidencies. But there is one assurance that private investors can take to the bank-innovation in the face of space exploration always pays. "You have to innovate, an...
Colorado School of Mines thesis confirms that the germanium values in Alaska deposit have long been underreported. In addition to hosting 6.3 billion pounds of copper and 88 million lb of cobalt critical to the energy transition, the Bornite deposit in Alaska's Ambler Mining District may also be a significant source of the germanium essential to both clean energy and high-tech. "Germanium is an important metal with numerous applications, particularly in the manufacture of...
NASA has selected the geology team for the Artemis III moon flight, the first crewed lunar landing mission since the Apollo missions over 50 years ago. The astrogeology team will help plan geological investigations for the Artemis crew, which includes the first woman, first man of color, and first Canadian on a moon mission. Led by Brett Denevi of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Maryland, the Artemis III geology team is working with NASA to determine the...
Foreseeing the importance of a presence in space, the Minister for Industry and Science, Australian parliament member Ed Husic, along with dignitaries from the Australian Space Agency and NASA, announced the EPE and Lunar Outpost Oceania consortium as one of two successful groups to receive stage-one funding under Australia's Moon to Mars Trailblazer Initiative. The Trailblazer program was launched in late 2021 as part of the Moon to Mars Initiative, which seeks to progress...
Geothermal power has generally represented region-specific and niche clean energy in the public consciousness for over a century. Today, thanks to a profusion of social outreach and government incentives, investors and leaders across both public and private sectors are exploring lesser-known applications and exciting advancements in the field. Just a few feet below the surface, the earth maintains a near-constant temperature that belies the seasonal extremes of aboveground...
General Motors, Stellantis, and Tesla moving further up battery supply chain With the batteries powering the electric vehicle revolution demanding more lithium than miners can produce, the price of this lightest metal in the universe rocketed more than 1,000% over the span of two years. This has prompted automakers such as Tesla and General Motors to become more directly involved in the mining and refining of the lithium-ion battery namesake. "Price of lithium has gone to...
Colorado School of Mines, Lunar Outpost work on NASA project The Center for Space Resources at Colorado School of Mines and Lunar Outpost has been selected to carry out the Autonomous Site Preparation: Excavation, Compaction and Testing (ASPECT) project; part of NASA's larger Lunar Surface Technology Research (LuSTR) program that is preparing for the eventuality that Man will be living, working, and traveling frequently to and from the Moon. As one of only three...
Missouri University of Science and Technology has been selected as part of a NASA project to develop lunar infrastructure technologies, with researchers from the school developing mineral extraction techniques that may one day make it possible for people to live and work on the Moon. Announced in February, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected three U.S. universities as part of its LuSTR Space Technology Research Grants program. In the hopes to supplement...
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Aug. 18 announced the winners of its Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, which is incentivizing new approaches for excavating resources on the Moon and beyond. As NASA prepares to go to the Moon with the Artemis program, in-situ resource utilization is of paramount importance, as current methods of rocketing Earth resources into space are too costly. As one of the barest of commodities for human survival, water is the goal for 13...
Already positioned to be the first North American producer of the battery-grade cobalt being demanded by a rapidly growing electric vehicles market, First Cobalt Corp. has been awarded $600,000 in funding from the US Department of Energy's Critical Materials Institute for research on innovative techniques for recovering the cobalt and copper from its Iron Creek project in Idaho. Being matched equally by funds from First Cobalt, this $1.2 million interdisciplinary research...
Boston Dynamics' robot dog Spot has the agility, perseverance, and skills to be a miner's best friend by taking over the risky and mundane mining tasks. Spot is already carrying out patrolling duties at mines around the globe and the Colorado School of Mines recently unboxed its own robot dog. "We have never had a robot that is so agile, that is so well designed, that can do a lot of things just out of the box," said Hau Zhang, an associate professor in the Department of...
With NASA and the private sector taking a serious look at mining lunar and Martian soil in support of human outposts, Colorado School of Mines has unveiled two new undergraduate minors to support these space-faring endeavors. Currently the only academic institution in the Unites States to offer an advanced degree in space resources, the Colorado School of Mines is adding a space mining minor this fall that will allow undergraduate students to get a flavor of the future of...
The United States depends on foreign countries for more than 50 percent of its supply of 31 minerals considered critical to the nation's economic wellbeing and national security, including 100 percent import-reliant for 14 of them, according to Mineral Commodity Summaries 2020, a recent U.S. Geological Survey report. The list of mined commodities for which the U.S. is fully reliant on foreign nations for its supply is littered with high-tech minerals and metals needed for rene...
Chains are only as strong as their weakest link, and two United States federal agencies have determined that cobalt is the weak link in North America's electric vehicle supply chain. First Cobalt Corp. is doing its part to strengthen this link by delivering the cobalt sulfate needed for the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs from its refinery in Ontario and exploring its cobalt-rich Iron Creek project in Idaho. With the First Cobalt refinery in Canada on pace to begin...
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has thus far focused the automaker's efforts on manufacturing electric vehicles and the lithium-ion batteries that power them. This could change as a shortage of the minerals and metals critical to lithium batteries threatens to slow production and drive up the costs of EVs. "Price of lithium has gone to insane levels!" Musk tweeted on April 8. "Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve." In a...
The envisioned green future where every North American is driving a battery-powered electric vehicle charged with renewable energy could be undermined by cobalt, a somewhat scarce and controversial metal that makes lithium-ion batteries better. "Cobalt is considered the highest material supply chain risk for electric vehicles in the short and medium term," the U.S. Department of Energy penned in an April report. This risk has automakers, lithium-ion battery manufacturers, and...
What are critical minerals, where do we find them, and why are they considered critical? These are among the questions that will be addressed by experts during a two-day virtual workshop hosted by Missouri University of Science and Technology on August 2-3. This "Resilient Supply of Critical Minerals" workshop will provide insight and answers to issues surrounding materials such as cobalt for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, germanium for transistors, tellurium for...
Scientists are urging world governments to get out in front of the skyrocketing demand for the minerals and metals that are going to be needed for solar, wind and other green energy initiatives in the coming years – whether they come from terrestrial or extraterrestrial sources. According to a research report from the University of Sussex, the amount of cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium and rare earth elements needed for solar panels, wind turbines, rechargeable batteries, e...
