Unless they have a way to get that thing to Mars it’s a waste of time and money. Take us back to the Moon, NASA.
And I like these kinds of things. I remember reading there was supposed to be a fleet of these things that would act as a low level satellite staying up for months at a time.
The problem with space exploration is, there’s no economic reason to do it that would offset the huge costs of R&D, ground support, vehicle, fuel, and reentry/recovery. Soooo, it will be robots for a long while yet. And as those get better, asteroid prospecting and processing will probably be robotic as well. We’re not built for microgravity, cosmic rays, solar flares — but we have a depth of experience building machines that can put up with those.