Astroid to earth by 2025?

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Asteroid takeout—a one-billionaire mission to bring a 500-ton asteroid to Earth by 2025

By Dave Klingler |Last updated about 3 hours ago

Even the small moon of asteroid Ida (right) is larger than the body we might direct to Earth.
Photograph by solarsystem.nasa.gov
Visiting (and eventually mining) asteroids is viewed by space development advocates as an imperative stepping stone to making our way out into the solar system. One group of President Obama's advisors, the Augustine Commission, counseled that a manned asteroid mission might bring the highest payoff per dollar spent in terms of science and essential skills for space exploration. A study was also commissioned to check the feasibility of bringing a small asteroid—on the order of 10,000kg—back to the International Space Station. It reported no showstoppers.

Cal Tech's Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) commissioned a larger study beginning in September 2011 and issued its report earlier this month. In it, a who's who of people from at least 17 organizations suggest that we bring a much larger asteroid near the Earth and visit it there. After all, in the decade it would take to develop the skills and equipment we'll need to visit the asteroid belt, we could identify a target and make the tiny course corrections in its orbit necessary to have it arrive at our doorstep seven to ten years later. 

Figuratively speaking, a small mountain really could come to Mohammed. The much smaller spacecraft necessary to bring it could be launched on a conventional Atlas, Delta, or Falcon rocket.

In this case we're really talking about bringing home a molehill: only 500 metric tons and roughly 7 meters across. The KISS study points out that the Apollo mission brought back 382kg of samples in 6 missions, and the OSIRIS-REx mission would bring back 60 grams of surface material by 2023. By nudging an asteroid with some creative orbital mechanics, KISS suggested that 500 tons or larger would be well within the realm of possibility. Several targets could be identified every year.

The problem requires three technological developments, the first of which we've mastered—we now have the ability to identify candidate asteroids. The second is solar electric propulsion. NASA recently received the results of four study contracts it awarded late last year for the construction of SEP-driven orbital tugboats. The last development involves NASA's plan to have a human presence in the area of space to which asteroids could safely be delivered: geosynchronous orbits and the Lagrange points between the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. A small spacecraft could deliver between 28 and 70 times its own mass back into easier-to-access space.

By the best metrics in spaceflight available today, the mission is only a one-billionaire problem. And as it happens, a few billionaires may be interested.

According to MIT's Technology Review, a new firm backed by several deep-pocketed investors will announce itself Tuesday at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The firm calls itself Planetary Resources, and the people involved include Charles Simonyi of Microsoft, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, James Cameron, Ross Perot Jr., and Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize Foundation. With this much money involved, the eyeballs of space geeks everywhere are now expectantly coming to bear on Seattle.



© 2012 Condé Nast. All rights reserved

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FLORIDA TODAY | Apr. 20, 2012  
Space-exploration startup vows to redefine 'natural resources'

Written by
Todd Halvorson | FLORIDA TODAY   

CAPE CANAVERAL — Two Google billionaires, a famous filmmaker, Microsoft’s former chief software architect and a former shuttle astronaut will unveil a space exploration company next week that they say will create a new industry.

The exact nature of Planetary Resource Inc.’s business is still under wraps, but speculation centers on the possibility of an asteroid mining company.

“The company will overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP,” the company said in a media alert announcing an unveiling next Tuesday. “This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources.’ ”

Planetary Resources Inc., was co-founded by space visionary Peter Diamandis, the man behind the Ansari X-Prize competition, and commercial space entrepreneur Eric Anderson, the chairman of Space Adventures, the company that brokers space-tourist flights to the International Space Station.

Diamandis hinted at his next big project in an interview this month with Forbes.

“What I can tell you is that since my childhood, I’ve wanted to do one thing: Be an asteroid miner,” he said in an interview posted on YouTube. “So stay tuned on that one.”

Former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki is the president and chief engineer of Planetary Resources. Lewicki was a senior flight director on the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, and the surface operations manager for NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander mission.

Diamandis, Anderson and Lewicki also are involved with a secretive start-up called Arkyd Astronautics. The company’s LinkedIn profile says it “develops technologies and systems to enable low-cost commercial robotic exploration of the solar system.”

Among Planetary Resources Inc. investors are:

• Ross Perot Jr., the son of the former presidential candidate

• Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page and Google chairman Eric Schmidt

• Filmmaker James Cameron

• Billionaire Microsoft alum Charles Simonyi, who flew twice to the ISS

Advisers include veteran shuttle mission specialist Tom Jones. Jones holds a doctorate in planetary science. His specialties: remote sensing of asteroids, meteorite spectroscopy and applications of space resources. Jones also performed advanced program planning for NASA’s Solar System Exploration division, investigating future robotic missions.

Planetary Resources Inc. will unveil its venture on Tuesday in Seattle.

Contact Halvorson at 321-639-0576 or thalvorson@floridatoday.com.


Copyright © 2012 www.floridatoday.com.

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Google execs, director Cameron in space venture
Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and billionaire co-founder Larry Page have teamed up with "Avatar" director James Cameron and other investors to back an ambitious space exploration and natural resources venture, details of which will be unveiled next week.

The fledgling company, called Planetary Resources, will be unveiled at a Tuesday news conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, according to a press release issued this week.

Aside from naming some of the company's high-profile backers, the press release disclosed tantalizingly few details, saying only that the company will combine the sectors of "space exploration and natural resources" in a venture that could add "trillions of dollars to the global GDP." The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Planetary Resources will explore the feasibility of mining natural resources from asteroids, a decades-old concept.

"This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources,'" according to the press release.

Planetary Resource was co-founded by Eric Anderson, a former NASA Mars mission manager, and Peter Diamandis, the commercial space entrepreneur behind the X-Prize, a competition that offered $10 million to a group that launched a reusable manned spacecraft. Other notable investors include Charles Simonyi, a former top executive at Microsoft, and K. Ram Shriram, a Google director.

The venture will be the latest foray into the far-flung for Cameron, who dived last month in a mini-submarine to the deepest spot in the Mariana Trench. The plot of his 2009 science fiction blockbuster film, "Avatar," concerned resource mining on alien planets.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Bernard Orr)


Copyright © 2012 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. 

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Space mining startup set for launch in US
AFP

A startup evidently devoted to mining asteroids for metals is to make its public debut on Tuesday in the US northwest city of Seattle, seeking to redefine the term "natural resources."

X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and a former NASA astronaut are slated to unveil Planetary Resources, which boasts an impressive list of backers including Google co-founder Larry Page and famed film maker James Cameron.

"The company will overlay two critical sectors -- space exploration and natural resources -- to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," Planetary Resources said in a brief release announcing the Tuesday press event in the Pacific Northwest city.

"This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'"


Copyright © 2012 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. 

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