Over 3 tons of gold -- worth about $200 million -- was shipped from Russia to Switzerland in May, almost all of which was marked as being for refining.
The inspiration behind this work is what the group sees as a major barrier to advancing technology: the short supply of rhodium and palladium, globally, and their high prices.
Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have shown that mining the Main Belt of asteroids that orbit between Mars and Jupiter could be done profitably.