SEATTLE — Planetary Resources, a new billionaire-backed space venture, will lay out its plan Tuesday to mine an asteroid for valuable raw materials such as platinum to bring back to Earth and water to use in deep-space missions.
In advance of a formal unveiling in Seattle, the company explained in a press release that it hopes to send a swarm of unmanned spacecraft to look for some viable asteroids to tap into among the 9,000 known near-earth space rocks.
“Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space,” said Peter Diamandis, a Planetary co-founder known for his efforts to develop commercial space exploration.
“As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications,” he added in a statement.
Planetary, for example, said just one 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid would contain the equivalent of all the platinum and its sister metals like palladium and iridium mined in history.
Meanwhile, water-rich asteroids could be used as “stepping stones” for deep space expeditions, Planetary said, providing water to orbiting space-hubs and a source for fuel.
The company is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Hollywood director James Cameron, and Ross Perot Jr., son of the Texas technology entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Ross Perot.
It also counts among its top advisers former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, former NASA engineer Chris Lewicki and MIT astronomer Sara Seager.
Despite its early support from both financial and space-research heavyweights, Planetary faces many questions about costs and the technology required to extract materials from asteroids.
John S. Lewis, a University of Arizona professor who said he is an adviser to Planetary, told The Wall Street Journal the company is working to recruit engineering and mission-planning expertise and allow private companies to bid to help it launch its spacecraft.
Separately, numerous scientists, including some at NASA, earlier this month published a study that said by 2025, humans could use robotic spacecraft to capture a 500-ton asteroid seven meters in diameter and bring it into orbit around the moon so that it could be explored and mined.