Wendy Zukerman

They're part of our renewable energy industry.

They are on your phones.

The phone that you have in your hand right now has rare earth.

They are in your cars.

So it's part of our society right now.

That's Angel Abud-Madrid again.

He's now the director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

Angel told us that one of these rare earth elements is called terbium.

If you haven't heard of it, it's a shiny, soft metal, and it's used to make the color green on your phone.

And there's a bunch of elements like this.

Lanthanum and utrium and... Like neodymium and dysprosium.

Rare earths are also used in stuff like solar panels and electric cars.

The problem is that on Earth, mining these elements is pretty nasty.

It can pollute soil and waterways.

Plus, the vast majority of rare earths that we use come from China.

And so the idea is that if the US or other countries could get their mitts on the stuff on the moon and then mine it without polluting the Earth, that would be win-win.

And to you, is it worth going after them?

So even though these things are called rare earth elements, there's actually a lot of them here on Earth.

And not just in China.

That's just currently where most of the mining is happening.