Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources, Inc. is an American company that was founded in November 2010 under the name Arkyd Astronautics and 2012 renamed to its present name. Your goal is to reduce raw materials on the asteroid mining in space.

History

The foundation of the company was announced on 24 April 2012 at the Seattle Aviation Museum by an investor group led by Peter Diamandis, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, James Cameron, Charles Simonyi and other people. A business objective is the detection of suitable asteroids with the help of space telescopes and later automated exploration, investigation and degradation of natural resources, such as Osmium, iridium, platinum, palladium, and water, by robotic probes.

Feasibility

Representative of conventional mining companies expressed their cautious about the plans of Planetary Resources, were also concerns about the potential impact on the global commodity markets loud.

The Japanese space probe Hayabusa 2010 brought the first soil samples of an asteroid to Earth, which was hailed as a technical triumph. These were, however, only 1,500 rock particles.

The Wall Street Journal reported on studies of NASA on ways asteroids closer to haul back to Earth. Thus, it would cost $ 2.6 billion to transport an asteroid with a diameter of seven meters into the lunar orbit. Such a project could be implemented, however, theoretically 2025.

In April 2013 Planetary Resources announced a cooperation agreement with the U.S. company Bechtel.

The end of May Planetary Resources launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance the first ARKYD Space Telescope.