The Asteroid Miners: Your Blueprint for the $100 Trillion Space Mining Industry

Mikal Jones is a space resources economist and the founder of Aurelia Space Research, a consultancy specializing in the economic analysis of asteroid mining ventures and in-space resource utilization. Over two decades of work in the aerospace and resource extraction sectors, Jones has advised government space agencies, private mining companies, and investment firms on the technical, economic, and regulatory dimensions of space resource development.

Jones began their career as a geologist with BHP, the Australian multinational mining company, where they worked on deep-sea nodule exploration and rare earth element supply chain analysis. That experience—learning to evaluate the economic viability of resource deposits in the most challenging environments on Earth—proved directly applicable to the even more extreme environments of space. In 2014, Jones left BHP to join Planetary Resources as a senior economic analyst, where they developed the financial models that guided the company's early asteroid targeting strategy.

After Planetary Resources wound down operations, Jones founded Aurelia Space Research in 2018. The firm has since provided economic analysis for over thirty asteroid mining feasibility studies, contributed to the technical working groups that drafted the Hague Building Blocks for space resource governance, and advised the governments of Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan on their space resource policies. Jones has testified before the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the economic implications of asteroid mining and has served as a technical consultant to the NASA In-Space Resource Utilization Program.

Jones is a frequent contributor to *Space News*, *The Space Review*, and the *Journal of Space Law*, and has spoken at the International Astronautical Congress, the Space Resources Roundtable, and the World Economic Forum's space sustainability sessions. A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the International Institute of Space Law, Jones holds a master's degree in economic geology from the Colorado School of Mines and an MBA from the University of Cambridge. Jones lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, within walking distance of the observatory on Calton Hill—a daily reminder, as Jones often says, that the next great frontier is visible from here if you know where to look.