Loki Margin Scandium Crust

Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system and one of the harshest places anyone prospects. On the cooled margin of Loki Patera, a thin crust of sulfur-coated silicate between 2 and 35 metres thick has trapped scandium and vanadium leached from the lavas below.

Because Jupiter's radiation belts make every hour on the surface count, the deposit was sampled fast. Crews landed for six-hour shifts, took Spectra Assay Lance readings across a 3-kilometre grid and bagged bulk samples for ore-sorting trials. A test run through a Sieve Ore-Sorting Rig at Io Scandium Works showed that X-ray sorting can reject 60 per cent of barren sulfur before any chemistry is done.

Grades average 160 g/t scandium and 900 g/t vanadium over roughly 12 million tonnes. Scandium at that grade is rare anywhere, and its value in lightweight aluminium-scandium alloys is enormous. Claim FV-0703 is radiation-restricted: Radiation Safety Officer Sora Lindgren must approve every crew rotation, and no individual may log more than 40 surface hours per year.