Asteroid mining operation Planetary Resources is as pleased as punch with those members of the US Congress who've backed "historic legislation" H.R.2262 – aka the "SPACE Act of 2015". The act "recognizes the right of US citizens to own asteroid resources they obtain as property and encourages the commercial exploration and …

NASA is crowdsourcing the hunt for asteroids in Earth's purview, and has teamed up with the proposed space mining corporation Planetary Resources to use your spare compute time to the project. Last year the Planetary Resources visited hipster festival SXSW to announce the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge, a $55,000 competition …

The world could soon have its first crowd-funded space telescope, with Planetary Resources announcing the success of its Kickstarter campaign to raise $US1.5 million for its Arkyd 100 satellite. It didn't hurt the effort that backers included Sir Richard Branson – in for $US100,000 – and Google's Larry Page. The main aim of …

The Kickstarter campaign to build a satellite for public use is going better than expected, according to asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, and so it has extended its revenue target to help fund hardware upgrades to enable the orbital platform to search for exoplanets. The campaign, which seeks to partially fund an …

UpdatedPlanetary Resources, the asteroid mining company backed by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, is launching a crowdfunded satellite that could be in orbit by 2015. The Arkyd 100 satellite, named in homage to the Star Wars droid manufacturers Arakyd Industries, is a small orbital platform that will form part of the …

In the last year, we've seen two commercial ventures announce different plans to harvest the material bounty of the solar system by mining asteroids. So are we at the foothills of a post-scarcity economy or are people blowing a lot of hot air on the latest fad du jour? In April, Planetary Resources announced a scheme to fire …

A second commercial venture to mine the near infinite resources of outer space has been started, and Deep Space Industries (DSI) is promising its spacecraft and 3D printers will allow successful mining operations within a decade. The venture says that it will have its first class of 55lb (25kg) "FireFly" probes ready for …

AnalysisIsn't it exciting that Planetary Resources is going to jet off and mine the asteroids? This is every teenage sci-fi geek's dream, that everything we imbibed from Verne through Heinlein to Pournelle is going to come true! But there's always someone, isn't there, someone like me, ready to spoil the party. The bit that I cannot …

Washington-based Planetary Resources is pursuing the dream of mining near-Earth asteroids, signing a deal with the UK's Virgin Galactic for payload services. Planetary Resoures wants to use Virgin Galactic's LauncherOne booster to blast a series of robot craft into space to pave the way for asteroid mining. The firm's Arkyd- …

The much-hyped launch of Planetary Resources has been held in the august surroundings of the Museum of Flight in Seattle; so now we've got some details how feasible are the plans? According to the roadmap laid out the first phase of the project will kick off with the launch of the Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft, which is …

A powerful cabal of tech, media and aeronautics uber executives are set to reveal how their freshly launched company Planetary Resources, will scope for natural resources outside of planet earth. The new entity, backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Google board member K.Ram Shriram, filmmaker …