For centuries, people have done the hard work of mining useful minerals and metals from solid rock. Then, scientists learned how to harness the power of tiny microbes to do some of this labor. This process, called biomining, has become common on Earth.
As humans plan expeditions to places such as the Moon and Mars, biomining offers a way to obtain needed materials on other planetary bodies rather than bringing them from Earth. This approach is called in-situ resource utilization. However, microbes and rocks interact differently outside of Earth’s gravity, potentially affecting output from extraterrestrial biomining.
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