MinRes to put lithium mine on ice, to cut 300 jobs
The company will put its Bald Hill lithium mine in Western Australia under care and maintenance starting this week.
Australia-based Fleet Space Technologies, developer and operator of microsatellites that deliver universal connectivity, announced Tuesday three new features to their mineral exploration technology, ExoSphere By Fleet — built to enhance the agility and accuracy of data-driven exploration efforts worldwide.
Fleet brings together satellite connectivity, remote geophysical data acquisition, and near real-time data processing to deliver actionable 3D models of the Earth’s subsurface and has added new features to its ExoSphere platform, which include the Sensitivity Model, Data Processing Report, and Source Data Pack.
So far this year, Fleet has completed an oversubscribed A$50m Series C funding round following the commercialization of their ExoSphere technology and was awarded a Demonstrator Program contract by the Australian Space Agency to develop geophysical devices for locating water deposits on the Moon.
Over 30 global exploration companies have used the technology to conduct surveys on a variety of commodity types across five continents, including Rio Tinto, Barrick Gold and Core Lithium.
For all in-progress or future surveys, explorers will be able to download new data intelligence assets on-demand from the ExoSphere platform that will deliver greater insights into ambient noise conditions, data quality, and confidence levels across different parts of their 3D model, the company said in a statement.
Leveraging its constellation of low Earth orbit satellites and the advances in passive seismic array technology, Fleet said ExoSphere has disrupted mineral exploration by reducing the time it takes to receive an actionable 3D model of a survey area from months or years to a matter of days.
Traditionally, data acquisition and processing from geophysical surveys can take years or months before they can be leveraged as part of any exploration campaign.
“We have arrived at an inflection point in humanity’s journey towards renewable energy. The mineral exploration industry is on the brink of unprecedented transformation as shallow discoveries are exhausted and demand for critical minerals needed for the energy transition continue to intensify,” CEO Flavia Tata Nardini said in the statement.
“Fleet’s space-enabled technology has demonstrated a path to scale critical mineral exploration globally while also helping to reduce environmental impact, which is the only approach that will enable humanity to reach its net-zero ambitions over the coming decades,” Nardini said.
