Extreme Tech= Asteroid Mining

Asteroid mining firm set to deploy its first satellite

• By Ryan Whitwam on May 6, 2015 at 12:25 pm
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Based in Redmond, Washington, Planetary Resources made news a few years ago when it received backing from technology heavyweights like Larry Page to set up an asteroid miningoperation. The company has been largely quiet since the initial excitement died down, but Planetary Resources is about to take a big step. At this moment, Planetary Resources’ first satellite is sitting aboard the International Space Station, waiting to be deployed.

The satellite is called the Arkyd-3R — the R stands for Reflight, because this is the second attempt to launch the mission. The first Arkyd satellite was lost in October when Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket exploded shortly after liftoff on an ISS resupply mission. The satellite successfully made its way to the station on last month’s SpaceX Dragon mission. Now that it’s in place, the company expects to have Arkyd-3R released into orbit this summer.

Asteroid mining has the potential to be extremely profitable, but also a boon to humanity’s future in space. The mineral wealth in a single small asteroid could be in the billions, but simply having access to ice deposits on an asteroid could be important, too. Water ice can be broken down on site into oxygen and hydrogen for use as rocket fuel. This would allow Planetary Resources to create refueling stations that would drastically expand our reach in space. The economics of space travel are much more friendly when you don’t have to bring all your fuel up from Earth.

A captured asteroid is an ideal place for a refueling station too. The low gravity means it doesn’t take much energy for a craft to land and take off again.

Planetary Resources won’t be using the Arkyd-3R to scan any asteroids just yet. This is to be a dry run for the hardware that will assess the health of all its subsystems and components. The satellite will orbit Earth for 90 days until its plunges into the atmosphere and breaks apart. The Arkyd 3 is basically the Arkyd-100 space telescope without the optical components (and it’s only the size of a loaf of bread).

If all goes well, future Arkyd probes will be able to start hunting for viable asteroids. In addition to the telescope, the company has designed two asteroid interceptor probes that will scan them for valuable resources. Before any of that happens, the company plans to send a second test satellite into orbit later this year. The much larger Arkyd 6 will be equipped with many of the instruments that will be used on the asteroid intercept missions that are to follow. This still only gets us to the observation stage. Actually capturing and mining an asteroid is still far in the future. Still, getting its first satellite into orbit at least shows that Planetary Resources is moving in the right direction.

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Tagged In 

• Space
• Satellites
• International Space Station
• Iss
• Asteroids
• Planetary Resources
• Asteroid Mining

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