A city inside an asteroid

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DARK MATTER

A single 1,000-foot asteroid could house an urban center the size of Manhattan

Jose Manuel Nieves

Future space colonists will not only have to live in permanent bases built on the Moon or on Mars. In fact, according to a brainy study published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences by a team of researchers from the New York University of Rochester, asteroids would be a perfect place to build large cities in space. Of course, after a titanic technological effort. “Our article -says Adam Frank, co-author of the research- is right on the border between science and science fiction. We take a sci-fi idea that has been very popular recently thanks to Amazon’s The Expanse series, and offer a new way to use an asteroid and build a city in space there.”

Asteroids are rocky bodies that orbit the Sun, remnants of the formation of the Solar System approximately 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists estimate that there are around 1,000 asteroids larger than a km wide roaming our system. “All those flying mountains going around the Sun,” says Frank, “could provide a faster, cheaper, more effective path to space cities.” In addition to their abundance, asteroids have many other advantages for human habitation, including their rock layers, veritable natural shields against deadly cosmic and Sun radiation. But things are not as simple as they might seem.


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