Company Plans to Mine Asteroids

Asteroid Itokawa as seen by the Japanese sample return probe Hayabusa in 2005-JAXA

Discovery News/  By Irene Klotz

A new company is developing low-cost, deep-space robotic probes to survey and mine near-Earth asteroids, officials will announce Tuesday.

While the ultimate pay dirt is expected to be platinum and rare metals -- currently selling for about $1,500 an ounce -- Planetary Resources also expects to extract water and other raw materials from some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth.

Water, for example, could be processed into fuel by breaking apart the oxygen and hydrogen molecules. It then could be sold commercially from fuel depots in orbit to NASA and other entities conducting robotic and human space missions.  

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