Deep Space Industries partners with Luxembourg to test asteroid mining technologies

Deep Space Industries, the asteroid mining company, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Luxembourg Government to co-fund the development and launch of DSI’s first spacecraft. Known as Prospector-X, the small spacecraft will test key technologies in Low Earth Orbit that will be necessary for future asteroid prospecting.

Prospector-X / Image courtesy of Bryan Versteeg/Deep Space Industries

The agreement is a small, but important step toward developing the technologies necessary to enable the potentially very lucrative business of asteroid mining.

“Our promising cooperation with DSI within the spaceresources.lu initiative clearly demonstrates the strong commitment of the Luxembourg Government to support the exploration and future use of space resources.” Étienne Schneider, Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy

Back in February, Luxembourg became the first European country to announce their intention to establish the necessary legal and regulatory framework required for in-space commercial mining activities.

The U.S. had gone even further last year when President Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA). CSLCA states that U.S. companies are entitled to maintain property rights of resources they’ve obtained from outer space, providing companies like DSI and Planetary Resources regulatory peace of mind.

Prospector-X / Image courtesy of Bryan Versteeg/Deep Space Industries

In Luxembourg’s February announcement they mentioned that they were considering investing in already-established asteroid mining companies like DSI and Planetary Resources.

Today, Luxembourg begins a partnership with DSI, and they’re already planning to work with others, stating that “separate negotiations to formalize our relationship with other companies active in this field are underway.”

Planetary Resources seems like a likely contender, considering they already launched their first spacecraft in July of 2015 in order to test their own asteroid prospecting technologies.

DSI, which has an office in the NASA Ames Research park and has worked with NASA through several contracts, will open up a second location in Luxembourg.

While parts of the spacecraft are currently under development, DSI will work with Luxembourg to complete the full system. Prospector-X will be built and tested at both locations.

Prospector-X / Image courtesy of Deep Space Industries

Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of the Board of DSI, told TechCrunch that one of the key technologies that will be tested on Prospector-X is an electrothermal thruster named Comet-1.

While Tumlinson wasn’t giving away many details, he notes that it’s a very advanced type of thruster that uses water as its propellant. He noted that advancing this technology would be of great benefit to the space industry, especially if a company could find a way to harvest water from asteroids.

DSI, of course, hopes to be that company.

In general, asteroid mining involves harvesting resources that will either be kept in space – asteroids could be made into gas stations for traveling spacecraft, for example – or with the intent of bringing these resources back down to the ground to sell on Earth.

“We are going out to places that are dead and deadly, and we’re harvesting the stuff of life so that humanity can go out there and live and explore.” Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of the Board, DSI

For now, DSI is focusing on harvesting water from asteroids for in-space applications like providing fuel for other spacecraft. This activity also ties nicely into their goal of perfecting a rocket thruster that requires water as propellant.

Tumlinson likened their plan to the oil industry saying, “It’s almost as if we were drilling for the first oil and we were developing the internal combustion engine.”

DSI has plans to harvest valuable metals and gasses from asteroids as well.

However, asteroid mining technologies will take years to develop, so deriving revenue from harvested asteroid materials isn’t likely to happen in the near future. In the meantime, DSI plans to make money by selling the technologies and spacecraft capabilities they develop in the process.

“Part of the beauty of what we’re doing is that the thruster and the other technologies and capabilities that we’re demonstrating are applicable to the space market right now.” Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of the Board, DSI

After Prospector-X flies in Low Earth Orbit, DSI plans to launch their next spacecraft, Prospector-1 on a mission to an asteroid. Estimated to launch in four years, Prospector-1 will return information about the asteroid’s composition and what Tumlinson referred to as “diggability” (essentially how easy the asteroid would be to mine).

Down the road, Tumlinson said that multiple Prospector-1 spacecraft could be sent to different asteroid candidates in order to identify appropriate mining locations.

The business of asteroid mining certainly holds a lot of promise. Many asteroids have water ice that can be harvested to create rocket fuel. Others contain useful metals that are considered rare here on Earth. The value of asteroids is unquestionable. Extracting that value in a cost-effective way, however, is the part humanity hasn’t quite figured out yet.

Companies like DSI and Planetary Resources are making the bet that their technologies and business plans will ultimately bring them to the goldmine of asteroids. We’ll just have to wait a awhile to see they’re right.

NASA invests $67 million into solar electric propulsion for deep space exploration

NASA has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne for a $67 million contract to develop an advanced Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system for future deep-space missions.

In a press release, NASA stated that the propulsion system could be used on robotic missions to an asteroid and in other missions related to their Journey to Mars program.

Compared to chemical propulsion (the type of propulsion that rockets use to escape Earth’s gravity well and reach orbit), SEP has lower thrust but is more fuel-efficient and can provide thrust for longer periods of time. For these reasons, SEP works well in the vacuum of space, particularly on spacecraft with long mission lifetimes.

SEP engines provide thrust by converting solar energy into electricity and using that electricity to accelerate ionized propellant at extremely high speeds. The iconic blue glow from a SEP thruster is created from photons released by the ions as they lose energy upon leaving the engine.

NASA has been working on SEP technology since the 1950s and they’ve used SEP on prior missions like the Dawn spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres and is the first spacecraft to orbit around two extraterrestrial bodies.

Under the new contract, NASA hopes to double the thrust capability compared to current electric propulsion systems and increase the fuel efficiency by 10 times the current chemical propulsion.

One challenge with deep-space missions that use SEP is that as you travel deeper into the solar system (farther away from the sun), it becomes more difficult to effectively capture light from the sun to power the spacecraft. Because of this, NASA stated its current SEP research is funded in parallel with work to advance solar array technology.

During the 36-month contract, Aerojet Rocketdyne is responsible for constructing, testing and delivering an SEP product for testing and evaluation. Eventually, the goal is to have Aerojet Rocketdyne deliver four electric propulsion units that will fly in space.

“Through this contract, NASA will be developing advanced electric propulsion elements for initial spaceflight applications, which will pave the way for an advanced solar electric propulsion demonstration mission by the end of the decade.” Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate

In addition to this particular electric propulsion contract, Aerojet Rocketdyne is responsible for the chemical propulsion — the RS-25 engines — for NASA’s Space Launch System, the rocket designed to be used on missions related to NASA’s Journey to Mars initiative.

Illustration of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission using SEP / Image courtesy of NASA

Aerojet Rocketdyne’s current contract is part of NASA’s overall push to advance SEP systems. NASA plans to test the largest and most advanced SEP system ever used in space on their Asteroid Redirect Mission, which is designed to capture an asteroid and place it in orbit around the moon. That mission is currently slated for the mid-2020s.