Quantum sensing company Atomionics has announced that its exploration technology matched a drilled resource estimate at an active iron ore mine in India, without carrying out any new drilling.
The company used a sports utility vehicle (SUV)-mounted quantum gravimeter coupled with a machine learning (ML) inversion tool to collect data over three weeks.
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This approach produced a 3D density model that estimated contained iron within 5% of the mine operator’s figure, which had been determined through more than 30,000m of drilling over four years.
Atomionics said conventional drilling to define the same deposit would typically cost between $4m and $6m.
The survey was conducted during active mining operations and did not require any interruption to production.
The gravimeter system was able to operate through noise and vibration, map the site’s structural contacts and identify deposit extensions that reached deeper than previously drilled areas.
Traditional gravity surveys have been limited to broad mapping and fault identification due to the mechanical instability of classical gravimeters, which rely on springs sensitive to daily drift and ground movement.
Atomionics’ instrument, named GRAVIO, measures gravity using cooled atoms in free fall inside a vacuum chamber.
This method enables absolute gravity readings, avoiding the need for base station corrections and allowing for high-speed data acquisition from vehicles over difficult terrain.
The GRAVIO data is processed using ORE-O, Atomionics’ ML-based inversion tool, which generates a 3D density model of the subsurface.
According to Atomionics, this approach enables exploration teams to receive a resource model suitable for drilling decisions within weeks of fieldwork, bypassing the usual need for separate data interpretation and external consultancy.
Atomionics chief commercial officer Mikhail Zeldovich said: “An increasingly large portion of time and budget in exploration drilling today is spent playing Battleship on a 1,000 × 1,000 board with the same number of ships as the old game’s 10 × 10.
“That is where years and millions of dollars disappear into. We are not asking anyone to stop drilling but we are going to shine a light that exposes the underground in 3D, so explorers can see which few drill-holes are worth it.”
Atomionics stated that it is extending the use of its system through an Early Access Programme, offering validation surveys at no charge to partners with existing drill data.
The company is also developing drone-based gravimeter surveys to access areas without ground travel, with plans to fund confirmation drilling where resource models indicate promising targets.
