Which Asteroid Should Humanity Mine First? A Sourced Shortlist for 2027–2032

Ask people which asteroid we should mine first and you will hear the same names: Bennu, Ryugu, maybe "that platinum one." They are good answers to a different question. The question that matters for a first mission is not which asteroid is richest, but which asteroid can a small, cheap spacecraft actually reach in the next few years, survive next to, and learn something from.

We spent a week on that question for Frontier's first research brief. The method was simple: take NASA's own accessibility database, filter it for launches between 2027 and 2032, and then check what is really known about each object that survives the filter. Here is what we found.

Start with physics, not wish lists

Every trip to an asteroid has a price in delta-v: the total change in velocity a spacecraft must generate to leave Earth orbit, match speeds with the asteroid, and (for a round trip) come home. More delta-v means more propellant, a bigger spacecraft, and a bigger launch.

NASA maintains a public database called NHATS that computes this for thousands of near-Earth asteroids and, crucially, tells you when each low-cost trip is possible. It assumes a round trip from a 400 km Earth parking orbit with at least eight days at the asteroid, so its numbers are a ceiling for a one-way robotic prospector. But it is the only consistent, regularly updated ranking that exists, and it is free.

So we asked it: between 2025 and 2035, which asteroids can be reached and returned from for under 6 km/s of delta-v in under a year?

The answer was 37 objects for 2025–2030 and 34 for 2030–2035. Then came the catch: every single one is tiny, somewhere between about 10 and 120 metres across. When we relaxed the limit to 7 km/s but asked only for bodies larger than roughly 70 metres, the list collapsed to two objects: the asteroid Apophis and a newcomer called 2025 VD24.

Where did the famous asteroids go?

They missed their windows.

• Bennu, the carbon-rich asteroid NASA's OSIRIS-REx sampled, needs about 7 km/s and its next cheap launch is March 2036.
• Ryugu, sampled by Japan's Hayabusa2, had its best window in 2020; the only trip in our timeframe is a brutal 12 km/s sprint in 2033.
• 2008 EV5, the 400-metre carbonaceous asteroid NASA once planned to tow a boulder from, had its minimum-delta-v launch in June 2024.
• 1996 FG3, a kilometre-wide binary, is simply too expensive to return from at over 11 km/s.

These are still the asteroids we most want to mine one day. Ryugu's returned samples turned out to be chemically similar to the rarest, most primitive meteorites on Earth, carrying about 6.8 percent water by weight. Bennu's samples contained dried-up salts from an ancient brine, 14 of the 20 amino acids life uses, and all five nucleobases. That is the prize. It just isn't reachable cheaply before 2032.

Small does not mean easy

If the cheap targets are all small, why not pick one? Because the best-studied small asteroids keep turning out to be spinning tops.

In 2025, astronomers found that 1998 KY26, the final destination of Hayabusa2's extended mission, is only 11 metres across and rotates once every 5.35 minutes, half the period and a third the size previously assumed. 2022 OB5, the asteroid AstroForge's Odin probe was sent to fly past in 2025, spins every 1.5 minutes; on its surface, centrifugal force would be nearly 100 times stronger than gravity. And the much-hyped "$5 trillion platinum asteroid" 2011 UW158 rotates every 37 minutes and, according to radar, contains no more metal than an ordinary rocky asteroid.

You cannot land on, anchor to, or dig into something that is trying to fling you off. For a first mission, a spin measured in hours is worth more than a spin measured in minutes, whatever the asteroid is made of.

What the pioneers have learned

Three real-world data points shaped our ranking.

Hayabusa2's Torifune flyby. On 5 July 2026, the Japanese spacecraft flew past the 840-metre asteroid Torifune at about 5 km/s and, from images alone, confirmed it is a contact binary, two lobes stuck together. A fast flyby can nail down shape and spin cheaply, but most of the 300 megabytes it collected were still trickling home weeks later. Composition needs a rendezvous.

AstroForge's Odin. Built in ten months for under $7 million, Odin launched in February 2025 and was lost within weeks to communication problems before reaching its target. The follow-on, DeepSpace-2, is a 200 kg spacecraft carrying a single camera to a metallic asteroid, launching late 2026 or 2027. The lesson: staying alive and talking from deep space is the first objective, not a given.

Karman+'s pivot to Apophis. The water-focused startup wanted a carbon-rich target. When its launch slipped to mid-2028, it re-ranked everything and chose Apophis, a dry stony asteroid it candidly calls "a dry ball of dirt," because the timing lines up and the body is extremely well studied. That is a company choosing knowledge over composition for its first flight. We think they are right.

Our shortlist

Delta-v figures are NHATS round-trip minimums.

Primary target: Apophis, April 2029

Apophis is a 340-metre asteroid with a radar shape model, a measured 30.6-hour rotation and a known composition resembling LL ordinary chondrites. On 13 April 2029 it will pass about 32,000 km above Earth, closer than our weather satellites. NASA's OSIRIS-APEX, ESA's Ramses and Karman+'s first mission will all be there between 2029 and 2030. NHATS finds a 6.05 km/s round trip launching 11 April 2029.

It has no water. We know that. But for a first-time team, the ability to check every measurement against three other spacecraft is worth more than any single mineral. What we would learn about the strength, grain size and metal-to-rock ratio of an S-type asteroid feeds directly into later missions aimed at building materials and oxygen rather than water.

Backup: 2000 SG344, October 2029

SG344 is the cheapest target in the whole NHATS catalogue for our window: 3.55 km/s over 370 days. Its orbit is almost a copy of Earth's. The problems: we know its size only to within a factor of two, we have no spectrum, and there is a long-standing, unresolved suggestion that it might be a discarded Apollo rocket stage rather than an asteroid at all. It passes 2.9 million km from Earth in May 2028, bright enough for large telescopes. If that campaign shows a natural body spinning slower than about an hour, SG344 becomes the fallback.

Watch list: 2025 VD24

The only other body larger than 70 metres that NHATS can reach under 7 km/s in our window. It has a solid 15-year observation arc and nothing else: no spectrum, no spin, no albedo. If it turns out to be a slow-spinning carbonaceous asteroid, it leapfrogs Apophis. Somebody needs to point a telescope at it this winter.

What a first mission would measure

Shape and mass (to get density, which tells you rubble pile or solid rock). Spin state, measured first because everything else depends on it. Surface composition with a visible and near-infrared spectrometer, looking for the absorption features that signal water-bearing minerals. Thermal inertia, which separates boulders from fine regolith. And, if the budget allows, a gentle contact or a dropped test package, because nobody has yet measured how much usable material an asteroid gives up when you actually touch it.

What it would cost

Honest ranges from real missions: AstroForge's Odin came in under $7 million and its DeepSpace-2 under $10.5 million including launch. Karman+ budgets under $20 million per mission. NASA's small-mission programme caps development at $55 million, a limit its first missions struggled to meet. Sample return, by contrast, is a different universe: OSIRIS-REx cost about $1 billion.

A Frontier prospector belongs in the $10–20 million class. That is achievable only with a tiny payload, a known target, and no ambition beyond coming back with data.

The honest conclusion

The asteroid humanity should mine first is almost certainly a water-rich carbonaceous body like Bennu or Ryugu. The asteroid humanity should prospect first, in the window that actually exists, is a dry one we already understand, with company on site. Apophis in 2029, with SG344 as the fallback and 2025 VD24 as the wildcard. Then, with a working spacecraft and calibrated instruments, the carbon-rich targets come back into reach in the mid-2030s.

This is Frontier's Research Brief 01

The full brief, with every number traced to NASA's JPL databases, peer-reviewed papers and company sources, is published at thefrontier.space/research. We wrote it to be checked: if you find an error or newer data, tell us.

Frontier is community-funded. If you want to help pay for the telescope time, trajectory studies and eventually the spacecraft this brief points toward, see how to contribute at thefrontier.space/rewards.