Company Launching Expedition to Mine Asteroids for Metals

A US company is going prospecting for metals and other materials in space.  Deep Space Industries (DSI) has unveiled plans to launch a fleet of spacecraft to mine asteroids in the solar system.

With millions of asteroids in a wide range of orbits between Mars and Jupiter, the resources are plentiful.  DSI chairman Rick Tumlinson said, "This is the first commercial campaign to explore the small asteroids that pass by Earth."

In 2015, the company plans to send "asteroid-prospecting spacecraft" known as FireFlies into the solar system on journeys lasting a few months.

These will be followed the next year by larger DragonFlies that will go on two to four year missions and bring back samples from the space rocks.

The first prospects for space mining are asteroids that NASA classifies as a potential threat to the planet. With proper timing, DSI says some of these are even easier to reach than the Moon.

According to Chief Executive David Gump, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century.

Over the next decade, Deep Space Industries hopes to be extracting metals and other building materials from asteroids to build large platforms to replace communications satellites. The company also envisions solar power stations that would beam carbon-free energy back to Earth.

DSI is the second company to enter the asteroid-mining business. Planetary Resources launched last year with the financial backing of Google executives and movie director James Cameron.