![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-01-22-at-8.49.40-AM-1024x553.png\" "\\"deepspaceindustries\\"")
Planetary Resources, the Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company backed by some of the biggest names in technology and aerospace, now has some more competition.<\/p>\nPlanetary Resources, the Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company backed by some of the biggest names in technology and aerospace, now has some more competition.<\/p>\n
A new Virginia-based space company called Deep Space Industries announced today that by 2015, it will be sending a 55-pound \u201cFireFly\u201d spacecraft into the sky in search of asteroids near earth. The company vows to have the \u201cworld\u2019s first fleet of asteroid-hunting spacecraft\u201d and <\/em>also has a patent-pending technology called the MicroGravity Foundry \u2014 a 3D printer \u2014 that transforms raw asteroid material into complex metal parts. <\/span><\/p>\n Mining for asteroids that could produce valuable materials worth sending back to Earth is a similar venture to what Planetary does. Deep Space\u2019s announcement today better explains why Planetary came out with a behind-the-scenes video yesterday that showed some of the latest prototypes of the spacecraft that it plans to use to hunt for asteroids. The company first released its own plans for asteroid-hunting back in April.<\/p>\n Chris Lewicki, Planetary\u2019s president and chief asteroid miner, cited a weight of 11 kilograms (less than 25 pounds) for one of the Arkyd-100 telescope prototypes in the video. That\u2019s considerably lighter than the weight previously mentioned by the company. The prototype also looks noticeably smaller than the one shown by the company when announcing its plans in Seattle last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe company believes that taking the long view, while creating value, opportunities and products in the near term will allow it to become one of the economic engines that opens space to humanity,\u201d reads a company press release.<\/p>\n Deep Space\u2019s CEO is David Gump, the co-founder of Transformational Space Corp. and Astrobotic Technology Inc. who also produced the first TV commercial shot on the International Space Station for RadioShack. Chairman Rick Tumlinson founded the Space Frontier Foundation and also Space Diving and Orbital Outfitters.<\/p>\n You can watch the official launch announcement at 10 a.m. PST here.<\/p>\n Previously on GeekWire: Asteroid miner Chris Lewicki points Planetary Resources to a new industry in space<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Planetary Resources, the Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company backed by some of the biggest names in technology and aerospace, now has some more competition. A new Virginia-based space company called Deep Space Industries announced today that by 2015, it will be sending a 55-pound \u201cFireFly\u201d spacecraft into the sky in search of asteroids near earth. The company vows […]<\/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":[4820,5147],"class_list":["post-19709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-planetary-resources","tag-space-travel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19709"}],"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=19709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/planetaryresources-300x68.png\" "\\"planetaryresources\\"")
While Planetary already has big-name investors like Google\u2019s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, filmmaker James Cameron, and early Google investor Ram Shriram, Deep Space is currently looking for customers and sponsors who \u201cwant to be a part of creating this new space economy.\u201d<\/p>\n