Planetary Resources, the U.S.-based start-up aiming to mine asteroids, lost its first test satellite aboard a commercial rocket that exploded only six seconds after take-off Tuesday.
The unmanned rocket, contracted to Orbital Sciences Corp. by NASA, was carrying supplies to the International Space Station. Among the cargo was Planetary Resources’ Arkyd A3, a test vehicle that was to orbit Earth.
Shortly after the explosion, the company Tweeted: “Live to fly another day. Onward!,” followed by a “Cheer up everybody – A3 was just a robot! We are making more.”
Competitor Deep Space Industries took the defeat to heart and issued a press release saying that “a loss for one of us is a loss for all.”
“We know how hard they have been working, and the high expectations we all had for their first mission.”
Arkyd A3 had been designed to test and validate technology and software for the asteroid miner’s planned Arkyd-100 space telescopes. It would have been the first of a series of orbital test flights scheduled for Planetary Resources, while Deep Space Industries’ test flights will begin in 2015.
Asteroids are rich in valuable minerals. An M-type asteroid, the third most common type, just one km diameter could contain more than two billion tons of iron ore and nickel, not too mention other riches such as platinum and diamonds.
Watch the explosion as it happened here:
3 Comments
enterprise
Where’s “Spock” when you need him?
Ivan Fed
Why is the US still participating and PAYING for this ISS program with Russia. Do they believe Mr. Putin, just like the EU and the world, that he can be trusted. The Crimea invasion proves otherwise! The use of older soviet rockets that the US used in this adventure surely proves a point. Get out of the ISS program and send the monies saved to Ukraine for its war against Mr. Putin’s continued war actions. One must take a firm stance for freedom and not dance around the main issue.Womanly words and manly deeds !!!!!
Matt
The News Release of the Junior Miner would start with
” the company is please to report that their rocket launch was successful, however it encountered a problem shortly into flight. We anticipate this will not effect the overall program and we expect to make all the shareholders rich one day”
“We seek safe Harbour”