NASA's robotic prospectors are helping scientists understand what asteroids are made of – setting the stage for miners to follow someday

Mining an asteroid probably won't look exactly like mining does on Earth, but some principles will stay the same. posteriori/iStock via Getty Images

The cars, cellphones, computers and televisions that people in the U.S. use every day require metals like copper, cobalt and platinum to build. Demand from the electronics industry for these metals is only rising, and companies are constantly searching for new places on Earth to mine them.

Scientists estimate that lots of these metals exist thousands of miles beneath Earth’s surface, in its molten core, but that’s far too deep and hot to mine. Instead, some companies hope to one day search for deposits that are literally out of this world — on asteroids.