Mining

How to start
Mining is an easy and safe way to make credits in the game. To be able to mine and scoop resources from asteroids you need to acquire 3 ship components: the Mining Laser, the Mining Scanner and the Tractor Beam. You can also buy the Mining Turret if it is available for your ship.

In order to mine you need to fly to an Asteroid Belt and activate your Mining Scanner. For a short time it will highlight the asteroid(s) containing mineable Resources. Pick an asteroid and make your way there.

Once you reach the asteroid cut the engines at approximately 1,00 K. The asteroid will spin and you'll search on it for a spot with a yellow dot and grid pattern. Aim your Mining Laser and fire (set power management to weapons to be able to fire the mining laser longer). Resources will drop in space so be sure to collect them with the Tractor Beam.

When the asteroid's resources are exhausted a message will appear to inform you about this (also the yellow mesh will disappear as its resource marker in the mini-map). It is possible to exhaust all of the asteroids in a system, but once you jump out and back into that system they will respawn. If you cannot collect all the resources, they will remain if you leave the asteroid field as long as you do not leave the system. So you can jump to an in-system station and sell resources, then return to collect the remaining items. It also allows you to drop valuable items to make room for resources to quickly sell, then return and collect them.

Drop table
Following Resources can be harvested from asteroids:


 * Iron ore
 * Pure water
 * Gold ore
 * Alien artifact
 * Alien fossil
 * Alien specimen
 * Anomalies
 * Obtanium ore

Tips
There are at several types of asteroids. Large/medium stone ones and small/medium gold-and-green ones are the typical ones you'll find, but there are also (particularly in the Colorado system) Ice-based asteroids. You'll want to mine the small gold-and-green asteroids because they contain much more valuable resources. When you activate the "Scan Area" function, the metallic gold-and-green asteroids will have a larger diamond marker on the mini-map.

Gold-and-green asteroid don't seem to drop Iron ore. Ice-based asteroids are particularly likely to contain Pure Water.

Search for asteroid belts that are not shown on the map. They usually have more of the gold-and-green asteroids. This may also be the only way to find Ice-based asteroids. You manually search for these by zooming into the system map (best about 3-5 levels short of maximum zoom in) and looking for the clouds of red or blue gas. The clouds become visible when you are almost directly above them when viewing the map. When you move the view off to the side the clouds disappear from the map. The blue clouds are the only ones that can contain ice-asteroids, but often just have rock asteroids. Once you have found a cloud, zoom into one level short of maximum zoom in and you will be able to see small asteroid fields if they are inside the cloud. Not all clouds have these, but most do. Once you have found the asteroid field you can zoom all the way in to see the field almost as if you were there. Place a marker and you can autopilot right to the field.

Sometimes asteroids are surrounded by mine fields. Better to clean the area (or location) to avoid damage and repair cost.