New Gold Rush: Company Announces Plan to Send Spacecraft to Prospect Asteroids

An artist’s rendition provides image of the asteroid Kleopatra, a type of asteroid that a future mission could target for further study of the solar system. A new company announced Tuesday that it would aim to mine asteroids near Earth for precious metals, water, and other materials. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“My smartphone has more computing power than they had on the Apollo moon missions,” said Deep Space Industries Chairman Rick Tumlinson in a statement. “We can make amazing machines smaller, cheaper, and faster than ever before. Imagine a production line of FireFlies, cocked and loaded and ready to fly out to examine any object that gets near the Earth.”

The company announced Tuesday it will send spacecraft to passing asteroids to find resources to accelerate space development to benefit earth.

FireFlies, the spacecraft, weigh about 55 lbs. and will be launched first in 2015, taking journeys of two to six months. NASA and other companies and groups are partners.

Live feeds will broadcast from the craft, enabling the public to take part, said a company official.

Deep Space wants to eventually make space travel less expensive through propellants they find on asteroids.

“Missions would require fewer launches if the fuel to reach Mars were added in space from the volatiles in asteroids,” according to a press release.

“Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development,” said CEO David Gump.

Using metals and other building materials from asteroids, large communication platforms and solar power stations will be constructed in space.

A startup company in April announced similar intentions.

“Mining asteroids for rare metals alone isn’t economical, but makes senses if you already are processing them for volatiles and bulk metals for in-space uses,” said Mark Sonter, a member of the DSI Board of Directors.

“We will only be visitors in space until we learn how to live off the land there,” concluded Tumlinson. “This is the Deep Space mission – to find, harvest and process the resources of space to help save our civilization and support the expansion of humanity beyond the Earth – and doing so in a step by step manner that leverages off our space legacy to create an amazing and hopeful future for humanity. We are squarely focused on giving new generations the opportunity to change not only this world, but all the worlds of tomorrow.  Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”