{"id":19678,"date":"2014-10-29T23:09:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T15:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/planetary-resources-vows-to-press-ahead-after-rocket-explosion\/"},"modified":"2014-10-29T23:09:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T15:09:45","slug":"planetary-resources-vows-to-press-ahead-after-rocket-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/planetary-resources-vows-to-press-ahead-after-rocket-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"Planetary Resources vows to press ahead after rocket explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"An
An artist\u2019s rendering of the Arkyd 100 space telescope in orbit. The launch of the Arkyd 3 engineering demonstrator this week was to be the first big step in Planetary Resources\u2019 plan to find and mine asteroids.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Planetary Resources, the Redmond-based asteroid mining company whose first experimental satellite is presumed destroyed in the explosion of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket on Tuesday afternoon, says its long-term development schedule won\u2019t be thwarted by the incident.<\/p>\n

The company released this statement on the incident and its future plans.<\/p>\n

\n

Our first technology demonstrator, the Arkyd 3 (A3), was onboard the ORB-3 when the Antares rocket suffered a catastrophic failure seconds after launch from Wallops, Virginia on October 28, 2014.<\/p>\n

As this launch failure and history have demonstrated, spaceflight is inherently risky. The A3 is the first example of our strategy to \u201cuse space as our testbed,\u201d and to tolerate failures by building success into the development path. With the A3, the Planetary Resources\u2019 team achieved most of our objectives when we delivered the spacecraft to the launch integration site; and for the past few months, we have been hard at work on our next vehicle, the Arkyd 6 (A6).<\/p>\n

Our development schedule has not been affected, the A6 is Planetary Resources\u2019 second demonstration vehicle in our spacecraft program. We have contracted with Spaceflight Services, Inc. to include the A6 in a rideshare configuration on an upcoming U.S. commercial launch vehicle, currently scheduled for launch in Q3 2015.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket exploded shortly after liftoff from Wallops, Va., on a mission to resupply the International Space Station. The cause of the \u201ccatastrophic anomaly\u201d is under investigation. No one was injured.<\/p>\n