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It has been another eventful week in technology.

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• Surgeons in Manchester have performed the first bionic eye implant in a patient with the most common cause of sight loss in the developed world.

• Researchers have figured out a way to manipulate mice brains from afar. The question now: what's next?

• A team of Doctors fixed a 3-D printed titanium implant to a baby girl’s skull in Cleveland to reshape it as soon as they discovered she has a deadly birth defect known as ‘hydrocephalus.’

• The first government-approved drone delivery took flight on Friday, in which an unmanned aerial vehicle successfully dropped medical supplies to a health clinic in rural southwest Virginia.

• When we think of asteroids, scenarios of species-ending impacts typically come to mind. The impact from a large enough rock would, frankly, be deadly. Yet, these space rocks contain  elements that are extremely valuable to us, including gold, iridium, silver, platinum, iron, cobalt, manganese, nickel, aluminum and titanium. Now, an asteroid mining company, Planetary Resources, has taken a huge step to being able to mine these space objects.

SOURCE  Futurism.com

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 Asteroid Mining  

By early next Spring, asteroid mining company, Planetary Resources may have it's first satellite in orbit.  The spacecraft, the A3, is a demonstrator unit to be used for early testing and validation of Planetary Resources exploration model.

Asteroid mining company, Planetary Resources has announced that it will launch the first in its Arkyd Series spacecraft, named A3 into low-Earth orbit as early as April 2014. The A3 is the Arkyd 100’s technology demonstrator, and the mission will provide for early testing and serve to validate the spacecraft’s core technology and software in the development of the program.

Related articles Deep Space Industries Enters The Asteroid Mining Business  Can Giant Telescopes Help Answer Fermi's Paradox?  Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson on Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources is under contract with NanoRacks, through its Space Act Agreement with NASA, to release the A3 from the International Space Station’s Kibo airlock. “We are excited for the opportunity that this rapid launch option provides us to begin testing the avionics and control systems of the Arkyd Series spacecraft,” said Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, Planetary Resources, Inc.

Lewicki continued, “The A3 test flight will enable the Arkyd-100 Series to be the most advanced spacecraft per kilogram that has ever been built. The A3 is a sophisticated yet cost-effective means to test technologies supporting the follow-on Arkyd 100 missions in 2015.”

About the size and weight of a small desk-top computer, the Arkyd 100 provides a compact and capable platform for near-earth asteroid (NEA) detection and characterization. The A3 test spacecraft, at just 10 lbs (4 Kg), about one-third the weight of an Arkyd-100, offers an even more compact vehicle for early testing for many of Arkyd 100’s key functions.

Planetary Resources’ long-term mission is to mine NEAs for raw materials, ranging from elements used in rocket fuel to precious metals. The Arkyd-100 Series will be used in low-Earth orbit to assist in selecting the first priority targets for the company’s follow-on expeditions.

“We believe that the best testbed for the Arkyd is space itself,” said Chris Voorhees, Vice President of Spacecraft Development, Planetary Resources, Inc. “Deploying the A3 from the International Space Station provides an efficient and cost-effective way to test many of the new technologies that we’ve developed for its future asteroid prospecting platforms. The team is excited about getting A3 some flight time on orbit next year.



SOURCE  Planetary Resources

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 Asteroid Mining  

In a recent Google Solve for X talk, Planetary Resources founders, Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson took the opportunity to describe the company's vision and plans.

Planetary Resources is establishing a new paradigm for resource discovery and utilization that will bring the solar system into humanity’s sphere of influence.

Using the technical principals and extensive experience in all phases of robotic space missions, from designing and building, to testing and operating the newly-formed company is working towards its mission of mining asteroids.

In a recent Google Solve for X talk, Planetary Resources founders, Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson took the opportunity to describe the company's vision and plans.

Diamandis showed a demonstration of the tremendous number of near-earth asteroids available to be mined.  As the image below shows, the opportunity is very large.

When describing  the LL Chondrite asteroid, the company projects the value of the platinum available from the space rock between $300 billion to 5.4 trillion US dollars.Tongue-in cheek, Diamandis states that that much platinum on earth would depress the market, so Planetary Resources' financing plan will be "to place put options on the market, announce the mission, finance it and go."

In the eyes of Planetary Resources, the tremendous investment required in asteroid mining is mirrored by the tremendous profits that may come from the endeavor.  Diamandis states that the phases for asteroid mining are the same as they are for mining projects on earth: detect, prospect, claim, mine and deliver.

Anderson wants Planetary Resources to be able to build hundreds and thousands of spacecraft per year to meet the goals of the company.  Anderson further wants to make asteroid mining an information technology, so that the industry can become exponential.

Interestingly, the name of the Arkyd probes that Planetary Resources is building is named after Arkyd Industires, a fictional company from Star Wars that makes the Imperial probe droids.  As asteroid mining is, in fact, the realization of a science fiction concept emerging into reality, this seems wholly appropriate.



SOURCE  Solve for X

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 Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources has recently shared their progress on the Arkyd space telescope they are developing to search for suitable asteroid mining targets. Presented by Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, you can see one of the full scale Arkyd-100 mechanical prototypes.

Planetary Resources, the new company that plans on mining asteroids, has recently shared their progress on the Arkyd space telescope they are developing to search for suitable targets.

In the video below presented by Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, you can see one of the full scale Arkyd-100 mechanical prototypes. The Arkyd-100 is to be used as Planetary Resource's space telescope and technology demonstrator for the Arkyd Series prospecting missions.

Much of the telescope has been designed and built in-house by the team at Planetary Resources. This is much the same way that Elon Musk and SpaceX have vertically integrated to drive innovation, control reliability, and keep costs down. This mindset and capability will allow the company to mass produce spacecraft at extremely low cost.

The Arkyd-100 is extremely small, and this will potentially cut the cost of deep space missions below anything the public has become accustomed to.

Planetary Resources put an incredible amount into 11 kg, from deployable solar arrays, to the integrated avionics bay, and an instrument and sensor package at the back of the comparatively large optical assembly, that dominates the volume of the spacecraft.  There has also been a lot of work put into the software driving all of these components.

According to Lewicki, the Arkyd-100 is the most advanced spacecraft per kilogram that exists today. "We’re drawing on our experience from traditional and private space exploration and combining it with exponential technology developments of the past few years and those to come in the next few years. With all of this we’re raising the bar on spacecraft design above anything that’s been done before."

The video also includes a tour of the Planetary Resources manufacturing facility, where they are building additional configuration prototypes. Using computer-controlled machining to create single piece parts that serve as major structural elements of the Arkyd-100 series, the engineers are driving simplicity and tight integration into the vehicle. The company's goal is evolve a process that allows just a few staff to deliver a finished spacecraft in a very short period of time.

Planetary Resources plans to share more information as they get closer to launching the first of their spacecraft.  More information is available from their media site.

What excites you most about the progress towards creating the Arkyd-100 series, the first commercial spacecraft capable of venturing into deep space?



SOURCE  Planetary Resources

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 Planetary Resources

Recently, Eric Anderson, co-founder of  Planetary Resources spoke at the NewSpace conference about the promising future of the company and what asteroid mining will mean to the global economy.

Since it was announced in April, Planetary Resources has been busy setting up the operation to mine asteroids in space.

According to the company, there are near-limitless numbers of asteroids and more being discovered every year. More than 1,500 are as easy to reach as the Moon and are in similar orbits as Earth. Asteroids are filled with precious resources, everything from water to platinum. Harnessing valuable minerals from a practically infinite source will provide stability on Earth, increase humanity’s prosperity, and help establish and maintain human presence in space.

The first lunch talk of NewSpace 2012 conference, company co-founder Eric Anderson talks about Planetary Resources and their plans for the future. —

Anderson serves as the CEO of Intentional Software Corporation, where he and his business partner, Dr. Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., have developed the “Intentional Knowledge Workbench” technology whose unique capabilities include drastically reducing the cost of encoding, processing, and utilizing knowledge. The Intentional Knowledge Workbench reduces costs & error incidences, accelerates innovation, and saves time in the development of software applications and other digital work products.

Anderson also serves as Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company that plans to revolutionize current space exploration and help ensure humanity's prosperity for generations to come. Planetary Resources is bringing the natural resources of space within humanity’s economic sphere of influence.

Mr. Anderson is also a co-founder of Planetary Power Inc., a renewable energy company created to help satisfy the ever-increasing energy needs of our world in the 21st century. Planetary Power’s unique technology enables highly-reliable, low-cost access to the Earth’s most plentiful source of energy -- the Sun. As Chairman of Planetary Power, Mr. Anderson hopes to assist in bringing access to affordable, reliable and clean energy to the global population.

Mr. Anderson’s philanthropic efforts are focused on the Planetary Security Foundation, an organization dedicated to informing and educating the public about nuclear weapons, the greatest risk facing humanity’s future, and developing strategies for how that risk can be eliminated.

SOURCE  SpaceVidCast

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