Asteroid Mining VentuBacked by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveil

FYI,

"Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron
Unveiled"
Space.com

: A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers including
: filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page has
: announced plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as
: precious metals and water.

: Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials,
: generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance
: humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource
: extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species
: spread throughout the solar system.

: "If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to
: the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and
: co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. "They're just so
: valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids
: really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

: Planetary Resources is officially unveiling its asteroid-mining
: plans at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news
: conference at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

: Precious metals and water

: Two of the resources the company plans to mine are platinum-group
: metals and water, Anderson said. [Images: Planetary Resources'
: Asteroid Mining Plans]

: Platinum-group metals ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium,
: iridium, and platinum are found in low concentrations on Earth
: and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In
: fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust,
: having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid
: impacts.

: "We're going to go to the source," Anderson said. "The
: platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access
: in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the
: Earth's crust."

: And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be
: mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters)
: wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever
: mined throughout human history, company officials said.

: "When the availability of these metals increase[s], the cost will
: reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices,
: TV and computer monitors, catalysts," Planetary Resources
: co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis said in a statement.
: "And with the abundance of these metals, we'll be able to use them
: in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells."

: Many asteroids are rich in water, too, another characteristic the
: company plans to exploit. Once extracted, this water would be sold
: in space, providing significant savings over water launched from
: the ground.

: Asteroid water could help astronauts stay hydrated and grow food,
: provide radiation shielding for spaceships and be broken into its
: constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket
: fuel, Anderson said.

: Planetary Resources hopes its mining efforts lead to the
: establishment of in-space "gas stations" that could help many
: spacecraft refuel, from Earth-orbiting satellites to Mars-bound
: vessels.

: "We're really talking about enabling the exploration of deep
: space," Anderson said. "That's what really gets me excited."
: [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight]

: In addition to Page, Planetary Resources counts among its investors
: Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former
: presidential candidate; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google;
: K. Ram Shriram, Google board of directors founding member; and
: Charles Simonyi, chairman of Intentional Software Corp., who has
: taken two tourist flights to the International Space Station.

: Cameron serves the company as an adviser, as does former NASA space
: shuttle astronaut Tom Jones.

: The plan

: The company is not ready to break ground on an asteroid just yet.
: Before that can happen, it needs to do some in-depth prospecting
: work.

: Of the roughly 8,900 known near-Earth asteroids, perhaps 100 or
: 150 are water-rich and easier to reach than the surface of the
: moon, Anderson said. Planetary Resources wants to identify and
: characterize these top targets before it does anything else.

: To that end, it has designed a high-performance, low-cost space
: telescope that Anderson said should launch to low-Earth orbit
: within the next 18 to 24 months. This telescope will make
: observations of its own but also serve as a model for future
: instruments that will journey near promising asteroids and peer at
: them in great detail.

: The prospecting phase should take a couple of years or so, Anderson
: added.

: "We will then, at that time, determine which of these objects to
: pursue first for resource extraction, and what mission we'll be
: facilitating," he said. "Before you decide where to put the gas
: station, you've got to understand where the trucks are going to be
: driving by."

: Mining activities will be enabled by swarms of unmanned spacecraft,
: according to company materials. Planetary Resources will focus on
: near-Earth asteroids, with no immediate plans to extend its reach
: to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or to the surface of
: the moon, Anderson said.

: He declined to estimate when Planetary Resources would begin
: extracting metals or water from space rocks, saying there are too
: many variables to lay out a firm timeline. But a recent study
: sponsored by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies estimated
: that a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid could be snagged and dragged to
: the moon's orbit by 2025, at a cost of about $2.6 billion.

: Whatever Planetary Resources' exact schedule may be, Anderson said
: the company is already well on its way to making things happen.

: "We're out there right now, talking to customers," Anderson said.
: "We are open for discussions with companies aerospace companies,
: mining companies, prospecting companies, resource companies. We're
: out working in that field, to really open up the solar system for
: business."

Mark Reiff