Asteroid Mining: Deep Space Industries to Execute Mission on 2015
Hard-working scientists made huge developments in the past ten years as they identify and track near-Earth asteroids. These scientific space developments have urged the new company, Deep Space Industries (DSI), to become the very first in executing the Asteroid Mining Mission on 2015.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) supported near-Earth object surveys since 1998 where 90% of asteroids and comets bigger than a kilometer in diameter were already discovered. Researchers ensured that all of the dangerous asteroids with orbits that approach closely to planet Earth are accounted for. For example, there are approximately 1,000 near-Earth asteroids with a diameter of 1 kilometer or more.
With that, Deep Space Industries is determined with their space mission in order to achieve what Australian mining consultant and asteroid specialist Mark Sonter calls "the main resource opportunity of the 21st century."
"Prospecting using miniaturized "cubesat" probes the size of a laptop will begin by 2015," DSI executives announced. Asteroid samples collected during the space mission will be returned to Earth for further analysis.
"Using low cost technologies and combining the legacy of the United States' space program with the innovation of today's young high tech geniuses, we will do things that would have been impossible just a few years ago," company chairman Rick Tumlinson stated.
"The technology is evolving so quickly that a space economy can soon become a reality. Providing resources from beyond Earth to power spacecraft and keep space travelers alive is the logical way to go," CEO David Gump declared.
Though the asteroid mining plan appears to be a magnet for an asteroid collision with Earth, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior research scientist Donald Yeoman assured that none will be a threat to the planet.
"We can say with a very good deal of certainty that no asteroid or comet large enough to threaten life as we know it will hit Earth in the next 100 years," Yeomans said.
If an asteroid is detected to approach Earth, Donald Yeoman said a spacecraft could be used to deflect the asteroid off its trajectory to the planet and hurl it out into space.
"We have conceptual plans on how this could be done. The reason the dinosaurs went extinct is because they didn't have a space program," Yeomans stated.
