Welcome to the Katar Asteroid Mining gallery. The images here are from an
upcoming game suplement about Spacefaring Miners.

Artist’s renderings by Anthony Cournoyer and Greg Bahlmann

Here is a typical Katar asteroid miner in his padded work suit. He carries
an energy pick over his shoulder to break up obstacles, and collect ore
samples. The picks have to be de-powered when used on carbonaceous asteroids
so as not to ignite the gases deposited there.

The workhorse of all mining operations this Katar Mining Survey Droid uses
a standardized ‘head’ the control and sensor module that can be attached to
various equipment besides the lightweight survey body. In roving packs of ten
to twenty, survey Droids scour the side of an asteroid looking for likely
mineral deposits and report their findings back to miners on the Work Tugs or
Operations Vessel.

Once sufficient veins of ore have been found, a robotic Drilling Rig is
dispatched, and attaches itself to the surface above the deposit. A Boring
Machine is then passed through the rig and begins digging into the
surface.

As rock clears out of the mine shafts, Miners bring pre-fabricated living
quarters, waste treatment facilities, life support modules, and a power plant
for the facility. All of the modules are standardized twenty foot diameter
cylinders that slide into an asteroid after the Boring Machine has been
removed from the site..

As rock flows out from behind the drill head it is caught in catchment
zones aboard the Rig. Periodically these storage areas are emptied by
Transport Bots ferrying materials to the fabricators on the Operations
Vessel.

All of these craft are overseen from the Operation Vessel, an Ops Vessel
enters a system once it has been surveyed, and deploys Drilling Rigs, and Ore
Transfer bots, these craft feed raw ore into the tanks on the back of the Ops
Vessel, and from there ores are processed into bars of raw materials as well
as replacement parts for any of the craft it controls. Miners live onboard
the Ops Vessel until shielded living quarters are available on one of the
larger asteroids.