Monday, May 7, 2012

Asteroid Mining



Sounds like dangerous work. But start-up company Planetary Resources is planning to do just that - send spacecraft to extract water and minerals from near-Earth asteroids.

You might be wondering how that could be even remotely profitable, but consider this:

Precious metals like platinum don't occur naturally in the Earth's crust, but are found in abundance in asteroids--a single asteroid could hold the equivalent of all the platinum ever mined on Earth. Other minerals found in asteroids include nickel and iron.

The company is backed by Google and Microsoft billionaires and hopes to launch the 1st spacecraft in two years.

No comments:

Post a Comment