Already a subscriber?Rio Tinto says technology used in the exploration of Mars can help it break a near seven-year mineral discovery drought and dramatically speed up its quest for new copper and lithium mines.
The technology eliminates the need for teams of geologists to spend thousands of hours collecting data from core samples produced in drilling and the long delays in sending samples off for laboratory analysis, the miner said. “LIBS can detect even the lightest elements on the periodic table, including lithium, an element key in our energy transition,” Rio said in an in-house update last week.
“That’s a massive amount of data that first, geologists haven’t been able to collect and secondly, it’s impartial. It’s just calling the rock what it is,” he said.