The first asteroid mining missions may not happen for a decade or more, but government agencies and private companies are steadily working towards making it a reality. As some groups work the engineering and business challenges, others are looking at the scientific and legal challenges. One such challenge is dealing with debris in a microgravity environment.
Read MoreDeep Space Industries (DSI), a subsidiary of Bradford Space, recently formalized support to build a small engineering and manufacturing center in Belval, Luxembourg. The new center will continue developing technology required for an affordable deep-space spacecraft platform. Ideally, this platform will lower the barrier for sending missions throughout the inner Solar System.
Read MorePlanetoid Mines is a privately-owned startup based out of New Mexico, USA whose primary focus is developing the core components of asteroid mining.
Read MoreTransAstra was one of two groups awarded the first ever NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase III grant. TransAstra will use the Phase III funds to advanced its first flight demonstration mission of the Mini Bee asteroid mining concept. The Mini Bee spacecraft will be about 250 kg in size, and will test the optical mining concept in a space environment using a synthetic asteroid launched from Earth. The CI-type asteroid simulant will be made by the Florida-based company Exolith Labs using leftover materials from Deep Space Industries before they shut down. Expected to launch in the early 2020s, this will be the first time water is extracted from material similar to asteroids while in space.
Read MoreWater has been directly observed from two samples returned from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. It was hypothesized that S-type asteroids contained low concentration water bearing minerals due to light curve data and studying similar minerals on Earth. However, the two Itokawa samples contained high concentrations of water at 698 and 988 parts per million weight, respectively. This holds great promise for asteroid processing targets if similar S-type asteroids have similar water concentrations.
Read MoreTransAstra Corporation proposed a spacecraft able to deliver five-thousand-tons of water-ice to cislunar space per two-year mission. This is the largest amount of delivered water ice proposed from any active group. They call their system the Queen Bee. It is part of the Asteroid Provided In-Situ Supplies (APIS; Apis) architecture. Queen Bee is a large scale version of their asteroid mining spacecraft design.
Read MoreKris Zacny of Honeybee Robotics made an exciting announcement on New Year’s Eve 2018; the successful demonstration of their WINE (the World Is Not Enough) spacecraft in vacuum. This prototype demonstration extracting water from asteroid simulants, heating it up to create steam, and using that steam for launching the system up. This prototype is paving the way for missions to eventually extract water from asteroids and return it to Earth orbit.
Read More
