Mineral resources from asteroid mining to add to Earth's depleting natural resources and World's GDP

With Earth's rapidly depleting natural resources, Planetary Resources looks towards extracting resources from Asteroid mining. 

Where do you look for when Earth's limited natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate and they have no substitute? You would probably suggest cutting on needs and consumption. But, Planetary Resources has come up with an unthinkable idea of exploring natural resources on asteroids!

Founded by Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis, Planetary Resources' mission is to add to Earth's natural resources through natural mining. Asteroids are rich in water, iron, nickel, cobalt and other minerals found rare on Earth such as platinum and its group elements (ruthenium, rhodium, osmium, iridium and palladium). According to the company, single 500 meter wide asteroid has an estimated 174 times the yearly world output where as 500 meter wide water reserve on asteroid may contain 80 times more water than a largest supertanker capacity which could be used for rocket fuel propellants.
Planetary Resources plans to mine near-earth asteroids ( part of their orbits are between 0.983 to 1.3 Astronomical distances from the sun). Around 9000 near-earth orbits have been discovered till date with 100 being added each year. Scientists estimate that there may be million such near-earth asteroids.

The company has found interest from stalwarts with investors like Richard Branson, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page. James Cameroon is one of the advisors to the company.

Planetary Resources has also raised $ 1.5 million funding for Arkyd Space Telescope on Kickstarter. The telescope will be publicly accessible through science center or museum. The company says the deep space photographs from the telescope will help educators and researchers and also enhance practical and educational space experience for students. It is planning to install one of the ground stations at an education center to integrate practical learning into curriculum. The donors will also receive a "SPACE Selfie" with their photos on digital screen of telescope and Earth in background from space. The company also also plans to  use the telescope in discovering the potential asteroids for mining mission. The project is expected to be launched in 2015.

First encounter with an asteroid happened in 1991 by Galileo Spacecraft. Since then, two asteroids have been visited NASA and Japan and NASA planning to visit an carbonaceous asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2019. Planetary resources plans to begin its first mining mission in 2024 and will add tens of billions of dollars to world GDP annually.  

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