{"id":19705,"date":"2013-04-25T00:46:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T16:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/asteroid-mining-company-reveals-new-telescope-says-water-is-the-gateway-drug-of-space\/"},"modified":"2013-04-25T00:46:01","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T16:46:01","slug":"asteroid-mining-company-reveals-new-telescope-says-water-is-the-gateway-drug-of-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/asteroid-mining-company-reveals-new-telescope-says-water-is-the-gateway-drug-of-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid-mining company reveals new telescope, says \u2018water is the gateway drug of space\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RchUz36W99w\" height=\"360\" width=\"600\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_96188\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-96188\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-96188\" alt=\"planetarysmalltelescopea3\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-04-24-at-11.16.49-AM-300x171.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"171\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-04-24-at-11.16.49-AM-300x171.png 300w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-04-24-at-11.16.49-AM-200x114.png 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-04-24-at-11.16.49-AM.png 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-96188\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Planetary engineer Spencer Anunsen holding part of an A3 prototype.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A lot has happened since Bellevue-based Planetary Resources&nbsp;announced its plans to mine near-earth asteroids just one year ago. To celebrate its one-year anniversary, the company just held a half-hour live stream today to discuss the past 365 days and talk about plans for the future.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really just been epic,\u201d President and Chief Asteroid Miner Chris Lewicki said of the past year.<\/p>\n<p>When you\u2019re part of a company backed by some of the biggest names in technology and aerospace&nbsp;that\u2019s planning to send spacecraft into orbit to&nbsp;ultimately swarm asteroids to mine natural resources \u2014 well, yes, that is pretty epic.<\/p>\n<p>The more newsworthy bit of the conversation came when Planetary announced that it plans on sending a small box into the Earth\u2019s orbit by this time next year.<\/p>\n<p>The device is called the A3 and is made up of three 1U CubeSat\u2019s, which are mini&nbsp;satellites&nbsp;designed for space research that each measure 4\u2033 x 4\u2033 x 4\u2033. The name is derived from a probe droid made by Arakyd Industries in Star Wars, the epic series that Planetary drew inspiration from to name its&nbsp;Arkyd-100 telescope.<\/p>\n<p>The company has had plans to send the Arykd-100 into space by 2015, but to bring the cost effectiveness of spacecraft development down and reduce overall risk, they want to test some of its&nbsp;functionality&nbsp;in the Earth\u2019s orbit first.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-65436\" alt=\"planetaryresources\" src=\"https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/planetaryresources-300x68.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"68\">\u201cWe\u2019re going to take as much of the functions of the Arkyd-100, cram it into cost-effective box and send it into space,\u201d said&nbsp;Chris Voorhees, VP of Spacecraft Development.<\/p>\n<p>You can see Planetary engineer&nbsp;Spencer Anunsen holding an A3 prototype above. Planetary said that they can pack a lot of the Arkyd-100\u2019s functionality into the A3.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe A3 really represents right on our technology road map for vertical integration for doing a lot of the&nbsp;advancements&nbsp;we can do to dramatically reduce cost and size of things,&nbsp;and be able to really get this&nbsp;capability&nbsp;out at the asteroids,\u201d Lewicki said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur belief and philosophy is the best test bed is space itself,\u201d Voorhees added. \u201cDespite the fact that we\u2019re a deep space company, we are going to use Earth orbit as much as possible for us. It\u2019s a valuable learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Planetary also released some new numbers: Since the company debuted last year, it has discovered 33,154 asteroids, which brings the grand total of asteroids to 616,921. Most of those, however, are not easy to get to.<\/p>\n<p>But, there are 9,767 near-earth asteroids and among those, 1,763 are energetically easier to reach than the Moon.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_37486\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37486\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37486\" alt=\"Peter Diamandis, Chris Lewicki and Eric Anderson of Planetary Resource. \" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/trio-300x168.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/trio-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/trio-200x112.jpg 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/trio.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-37486\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peter Diamandis, Chris Lewicki and Eric Anderson of Planetary Resource.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The key for Planetary is to identify which objects are worth mining,&nbsp;then develop technologies to transform them into valuable resources and retrieve them.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;\">\u201cOur first focus is in prospecting and gathering that information,\u201d Voorhees said. \u201cWe\u2019re an information company before a mining company.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The other interesting part of the talk came when the trio discussed the water found in asteroids. Water is valuable for several reasons: it\u2019s the essence of life, it shields radiation and in its raw form, water is useful as rocket propellent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWater is going to be the molecule that unlocks the solar system for humans to expand off the Earth and get into space&nbsp;permanently&nbsp;\u201d Lewicki said. \u201cIt\u2019s the gateway drug of space.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Planetary is a finalist for&nbsp;one of the most hotly contested categories in the GeekWire Awards: Innovation of the Year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Previously on GeekWire: Planetary Resources pulls in cash from nation\u2019s largest engineering firm to help mine asteroids<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Planetary engineer Spencer Anunsen holding part of an A3 prototype. A lot has happened since Bellevue-based Planetary Resources&nbsp;announced its plans to mine near-earth asteroids just one year ago. To celebrate its one-year anniversary, the company just held a half-hour live stream today to discuss the past 365 days and talk about plans for the future. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4927,4817,4820],"class_list":["post-19705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroid-mining","tag-chris-lewicki","tag-planetary-resources"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}