Space  

NASA has released new photos and video animations depicting the agency's planned mission to find, capture, redirect, and study a near-Earth asteroid. The images depict crew operations including the Orion spacecraft's trip to and rendezvous with the relocated asteroid, as well as astronauts maneuvering through a spacewalk to collect samples from the asteroid.

T he US space agency NASA has released new photos and video animations depicting the agency's planned mission to find, capture, redirect, and study a near-Earth asteroid. The images depict crew operations including the Orion spacecraft's trip to and rendezvous with the relocated asteroid, as well as astronauts maneuvering through a spacewalk to collect samples from the asteroid.

Part of President Obama's FY 2014 budget request for NASA, the asteroid initiative capitalizes on activities across the agency's human exploration, space technology and science programs. NASA is enhancing its ongoing efforts to identify and characterize near-Earth objects for scientific investigation, and to find potentially hazardous asteroids and targets appropriate for capture and exploration.

The agency is creating an asteroid mission baseline concept to develop further in 2014 to help engineers establish more details about the mission. Meanwhile, engineers and scientists across the agency continue to evaluate several alternatives, as well as ideas from the public, for consideration throughout mission planning. The mission also coincides with the formation of new asteroid mining companies like Planetary Resources.

This conceptual image shows NASA’s Orion spacecraft approaching the robotic asteroid capture vehicle. The trip from Earth to the captured asteroid will take Orion and its two-person crew an estimated nine days.
Image Source: NASA

In this conceptual image, the two-person crew uses a translation boom to travel from the Orion spacecraft to the captured asteroid during a spacewalk.
Image Source: NASA

This concept image shows an astronaut preparing to take samples from the captured asteroid after it has been relocated to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system. Hundreds of rings are affixed to the asteroid capture bag, helping the astronaut carefully navigate the surface.
Image Source: NASA

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The asteroid initiative will incorporate advanced solar electric propulsion technology as a power source for spacecraft, offering greater flexibility to the spacecraft and mission planners. The mission also leverages the agency's progress on the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and other cutting-edge technology developments.

In late July, NASA conducted its asteroid mission formulation review, which brought together agency leaders from across the country to examine internal studies proposing multiple concepts and alternatives for each phase of the mission, and assessed technical and programmatic aspects of the mission. Currently, NASA is assessing the more than 400 responses received to a request for information in which industry, universities and the public offered ideas for the initiative.

The agency will host a technical workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 to discuss those responses and the potential for ideas from them to be incorporated into the mission concept. Virtual participation will be available to the public. Participation details will be provided prior to the event.


SOURCE  NASA

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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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