Planetary Resources has what they call "the most audacious mission ever", one that has caught the attention of Star Trek royalty such as Robert Picardo and Brent Spiner. It's the task of finding the natural resources that will sustain the planet for future generations: the 9,000 asteroids in near-Earth orbit, known as Near Earth Objects, or Near Earth Asteroids, to be precise. The company's goal is to develop and deploy "low cost commercial robotic spacecraft" to mine these resources (relatively) close to the Earth for precious metals. Water is the company's highest search priority, the basic natural resource envisioned as fueling the prospective in-space economy. The extraction of rare metals from asteroids, on the other hand, would add value to the Earth’s GDP. The economic rationale behind all this is that a minerals-rich source of space resources will continue the sustenance of Earth's economy. Thereby increasing, it is hoped, humanity’s prosperity, while creating and maintaining a viable human economic presence in space. Spiner, known to millions of loyal Trek fans around the world as Commander Data, has signed on to this noblest of missions. In the end, it's a noble mission: space exploration, asteroid mining and stopping the gradual environmental degradation of the earth's ecosystem by availing ourselves of the mineral and aquatic resources of asteroids in near-Earth orbit. Spiner was among the celebrity guests yesterday at Seattle's Museum of Flight for the launch of Planetary Resources' most recent project, the ARKYD space telescope. Planetary Resources wants to bring the awe that astronauts experience in space to the rest of us by making the ARKYD pronounced [ahrk-kid], an advanced, orbiting space telescope, available to the general public.
Reported by Forbes.com 4 days ago.
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