The drive to explore deeper into space and establish colonies on other planets has intensified over the last decade, and with it the importance of space resources extraction.

Obtaining valuable resources and minerals, even in extreme environments, has long been attractive to humans. We have a history of facing hazards in search of valuable resources. From the gold rush in the 1800s to the recent surge in space resources, humans have been willing to take risks to find and collect scarce and profitable materials.

With advances in space technology, we're on the edge of the next gold rush—but not on Earth. Based on recent scientific and engineering breakthroughs and commercial interests, off-Earth mining is expected to begin in the next decade.

Potential mining sites include the moon, Mars and its moons, asteroids and even comets. Market predictions for lunar mining, particularly lunar water, project a multibillion-dollar industry by 2050. Although theoretical, these forecasts signal a worthwhile market, with Australia as a potential leader.

The motivation for off-Earth mining is multifaceted: access to an unlimited wealth of valuable space resources, the spirit of discovering new planets and the development of spin-off technologies to be used back on Earth.

A recent study submitted to Acta Astronautica and currently available on the arXiv preprint server explores the potential for using aerographite solar sails for traveling to Mars and interstellar space, which could dramatically reduce both the time and fuel required for such missions.

This study comes while ongoing research into the use of solar sails is being conducted by a plethora of organizations along with the successful LightSail2 mission by The Planetary Society, and holds the potential to develop faster and more efficient propulsion systems for long-term space missions.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has racked up an impressive list of superlatives in its first five years of operations: It's the closest spacecraft to the sun, the fastest human-made object and the first mission to ever "touch the sun."

Now, Parker has one more feather to add to its sun-kissed cap: It's the first spacecraft ever to fly through a powerful solar explosion near the sun.