It's ........ambitious!
Go into space, rendezvous with an asteroid... get on the asteroid while it whirls around the dark side of the moon & fiddle with it...
not for me ta!

But what do they want to mine? iron?
Why do i get the feeling this is going to end in a sequel to Avatar

Night_Gaunt wrote:
I believe they (can) contain various minerals such as nickel & iron.
Obviously mining them is going to be a big leap (excuse the pun) due to the expense of harnessing the asteroid, and then getting any produce to earth (unless it can be used for other endeavours in space).
I expect that this is just preliminary development in that (asteroid) field.

The Lagrangian points (pron.: /ləˈɡrɑːndʒiən/; also Lagrange points, L-points, or libration points) are the five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically be part of a constant-shape pattern with two larger objects (such as a satellite with respect to the Earth and Moon). The Lagrange points mark positions where the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses provides precisely the centripetal force required to orbit with them.

Lagrangian points are the constant-pattern solutions of the restricted three-body problem. For example, given two massive bodies in orbits around their common center of mass, there are five positions in space where a third body, of comparatively negligible mass, could be placed so as to maintain its position relative to the two massive bodies. As seen in a rotating reference frame matching the angular velocity of the two co-orbiting bodies, the gravitational fields of two massive bodies combined with the satellite's acceleration are in balance at the Lagrangian points, allowing the third body to be relatively stationary with respect to the first two bodies.[2]

The easiest way to understand the resulting stability is to say L1, L2, and L3 positions are as stable as a ball balanced on the tip of a wedge would be stable: any disturbance will toss it out of equilibrium. The L4, and L5 positions are stable as a ball at the bottom of a bowl would be stable: small perturbations will move it out of place, but it will drift back toward the center of the bowl.