With global resource demand becoming irreversably high and population too reaching ever-increasing numbers, many humans will be reaching toward space for a hand to leave the rapidly over-crowding rock.

While people may not get leave en masse just yet, NASA has plotted a path for some to enter space, retrieve valuable and useful commodities and send them to Earth. Asteroid mining could become the next great frontier of technology, science and exploration.

Asteroids are more than just inanimate space rocks; they can be comprised of materials which do not exist or are extremely rare on Earth, also providing an excellent glimpse into the conditions of forming galaxies and exploding stars. Even a tiny example, by asteroid standards, could yield metals worth billions of dollars on Earth.

NASA are on their way to striking rich in space, recently announcing the OSIRIS-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security and Regolith Explorer) asteroid sample return mission. It will launch sometime in 2016, bound for an asteroid called ‘Bennu’ on which it will land in 2018, conduct an extensive study and then return.

Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona and principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx says: “the mission will develop important technologies for asteroid exploration that will benefit anyone interested in exploring or mining asteroids, whether it's NASA or a private company.”

OSIRIS-REx will be fully equipped for its mission. It is outfitted with sensors for determining the best sampling locations before landing, a broad range of diagnostic tools for working out its surrounds and the composition of materials it collects, x-ray imagers, drilling devices, and mapping equipment.

NASA do not however expect to strike it rich on the first go: “the mission will be a proof-of-concept – can you go to an asteroid, get material, and bring it back to Earth,” said Lauretta, “next, people will have to industrialize it so that the economy works out, so for the recoverable value in any given asteroid, you're spending half that to bring it back.”

More information on the OSIRIS mission is available here.