These same devices will be useful if we wish to bring water-ice to Mars as part of a Terraforming project.
It might increase their economic palatability to equip them with assaying equipment to analyse rocks and asteroid materials.
Then we would simply be "surveying."
Any p[ractical asteroid-deflection program would greatly increase our abilities to do other things in space.
That reminds me, did you hear that Mars once had water on it and now is like a desert? Some kind of marcian warming must have taken place. As of yet scientists have not been able to discover the SUVs that may have been responsible for the warming. Stay tuned.