New Company Looks At Mining Asteroids

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

A new company backed by two Google Inc. billionaires, a big name film director and other space exploration proponents is aiming high in the hunt for natural resources—with mining asteroids the possible target.

The venture, called Planetary Resources Inc., revealed little in a press release this week except to say that it would overlay two critical sectors—space exploration and natural resources—to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP and help ensure humanity's prosperity. The company is formally unveiling its plans at an event Tuesday in Seattle.

While the announcement may cause some people to snicker at what could be a page out of a sci-fi novel or a Hollywood movie scene, Planetary Resources is making its debut just as scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other groups are embracing the notion of mining near-Earth asteroids and providing blueprints for how such a feat would be accomplished.

The possibility of extracting raw materials such as iron and nickel from asteroids has been discussed for decades, but the cost, scientific expertise and technical prowess of fulfilling such as feat have remained an obstacle. NASA experts have projected it could cost tens of billions of dollars and take well over a decade to land astronauts on an asteroid.


Asteroid mining by space pioneers would lead to a "land rush" by companies to develop lower-cost technology to travel to and extract resources from asteroids. Opening up the resources of space for the benefit of humanity is critical.

People listed by Planetary Resources as members of its "investor and advisor group" include Google's chief executive, and the company's executive chairman; a film director whose film "Avatar" depicted a corporate venture to extract natural resources from another planet; a former Microsoft Corp. executive, who has made two trips to space and funded other related activity; a Google director and venture capitalist; and the son of a Texas technology entrepreneur and former presidential candidate.

A former NASA Mars mission manager is listed in the press release as president and chief engineer of Planetary Resources.

The news conference announcing the launch of the company is scheduled to be held at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Tuesday.

Asteroid mining could take several forms, including sending humans in a spacecraft to an asteroid so they could explore and mine it. In another scenario, robotic spacecraft could be launched either to mine an asteroid directly or transport it closer to Earth so that humans could more easily reach it.

Such mining could yield a large amount of water, oxygen and metals to help further space exploration by allowing humans to fuel spacecraft, build space stations and other constructs. The resources could potentially be brought back to Earth as well.

Earlier this month, a study by NASA scientists concluded that, for a cost of $2.6 billion, humans could use robotic spacecraft to capture a 500-ton asteroid seven meters in diameter and bring it into orbit around the moon so that it could be explored and mined. The spacecraft, using a 40-kilowatt solar-electric propulsion system, would have a flight time of between six and 10 years, and humans could accomplish this task by around 2025.

The estimated cost doesn't include the billions of dollars that it might take to extract minerals.

With the right ground-based observation campaign approximately five attractive asteroids per year could be discovered. By exploring asteroids, people may be able to gain information or find raw materials that would allow humans to travel far beyond the moon.

A former NASA aerospace engineer who also was involved in the study, said he supports this strategy but noted that it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to get started and that Planetary Resources would need to find a lower-cost way to access space in order to succeed.

He is also skeptical the company could find ways to transfer raw materials extracted from asteroids back to Earth, given the cost of going in and out of earth's gravity well. Thus, he said, the materials could only be useful in space.

In 2010 the President set a goal to send a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025, but the details remain fuzzy and the effort hasn't generated much public excitement or political traction. However, NASA is working on an unmanned mission called OSIRIS-Rex that would launch in 2016 and land on an asteroid, study it, and bring a tiny amount of it back to earth by 2023. NASA also is calling on amateur astronomers to help the agency find "near-earth" asteroids that could be explored in the future.

In recent years, as NASA has pulled back on space exploration, wealthy entrepreneurs such as the founder of Amazon.com Inc., Tesla Motors Inc. creator and the Microsoft co-founder have tried to fill the void with their personal money.


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China to Launch Space Station Module

NY Times

HONG KONG — The Heavenly Palace, the first module in China’s permanent space station, will be launched next year, a senior aerospace official confirmed Wednesday.

The official, Qi Faren, said the craft, an orbiting laboratory known in Mandarin as Tiangong-1, would initially serve as a docking station for other spacecraft. His remarks were carried by Xinhua, the official news agency.

A model of Tiangong-1 was publicly unveiled during New Year celebrations last year. The 8.5-ton laboratory is expected to be 30 feet long, with a crew of three taikonauts, the Chinese term for astronauts.

The China National Space Administration said it plans three docking missions with the lab next year.

The space agency’s long-range plans include a 20-ton permanent space station that will incorporate Tiangong-1, as well as a separate lunar mission by 2022.

China successfully launched its first satellite in April 1970, a craft called Dong Fang Hong-1, or The East Is Red, which was sent into orbit by a Long March-1 rocket. China’s first manned spacecraft went aloft in October 2003 and made 14 orbits of the Earth. The country’s first spacewalk took place 18 months ago.

Aerospace experts and military officials say the Chinese military space program has made major advancements in recent years, notably when it tested an antisatellite system in 2007, using a ballistic missile to shoot down one of its own weather satellites 540 miles up.

Charles P. Vick, a senior analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, said in a white paper that China’s “space station programs have clearly won out in government planning priorities over the lunar aspirations.”

China has long insisted that its intentions in space are peaceful, although the head of the Chinese Air Force, Gen. Xu Qiliang, appeared to have gone somewhat off-message when he said in November that international “military competition has shifted towards space.”

“Such a shift is a major trend now, and such expansion is a historical inevitability,” he said, in remarks quoted by state-run media. “To some extent, if you control space you can also control the land and the sea, and you will be in an advantageous position.”

Meanwhile, American military planners have expressed concerns and uncertainty about China’s intentions.

“Where they’re heading I think is one of those things that a lot of people would like to understand better, what their goals and objectives are,” said Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, the head of United States Strategic Command, following General Xu’s remarks. “But they certainly are on a fast track to improve their capabilities.

“Clearly, I think what we’ve all come to understand is that space is a contested domain. It used to be looked at like a sanctuary. And clearly that’s not the case today.”