Cosmic Log
A new employment study indicates that roughly 3,000 people are directly employed by Washington state’s space industry, and roughly half of them are at Blue Origin, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture.
Most of Blue Origin’s 1,500 employees work at the company’s headquarters and production facility in Kent, Wash. So Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s payload sales director, has a good grasp on what draw space-savvy engineers to the Seattle area.
It’s been months since Planetary Resources had to scale back its asteroid aspirations because a fundraising campaign came up short — and the quest for cash is continuing as space industry leaders converge on the Seattle area this week for the Space Frontier Foundation’s annual NewSpace conference.
So how long will the quest continue?
“I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to that,” Chris Lewicki, the Redmond, Wash.-based venture’s CEO, president and chief asteroid miner, told GeekWire today.
But Lewicki said Planetary Resources, which has raised more than $50 million in investments and successfully sent two satellites into orbit over the course of six years, isn’t swerving from its goal of mining near-Earth asteroids to build a trillion-dollar industry.
Planetary Resources, a Redmond, Wash.-based venture that aims to make a fortune mining asteroids, is facing a more down-to-earth challenge: a fundraising shortfall.
Just last month, the company had its Arkyd-6 prototype space telescope launched into orbit by an Indian PSLV rocket, and that spacecraft has been undergoing testing.
Arkyd-6 is designed to provide midwave infrared imagery of Earth, as a technological tryout for future asteroid-observing probes.
A spokeswoman for Planetary Resources, Stacey Tearne, told GeekWire that financial challenges have forced the company to focus on leveraging the Arkyd-6 mission for near-term revenue — apparently by selling imagery and data.
“Planetary Resources missed a fundraising milestone,” Tearne explained in an email. “The company remains committed to utilizing the resources from space to further explore space, but is focusing on near-term revenue streams by maximizing the opportunity of having a spacecraft in orbit.”
Tearne said no further information was available, and did not address questions about employment cutbacks. However, reports from other sources in the space community suggest there have been notable job reductions. For what it’s worth, Planetary Resources had more than 70 employees at last report.
AUSTIN, Texas — Mining asteroids for water and other resources could someday become a trillion-dollar business, but not without astronomers to point the way.
At least that’s the view of Martin Elvis, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who’s been taking a close look at the science behind asteroid mining.
If the industry ever takes off the way ventures such as Redmond, Wash.-based Planetary Resources and California-based Deep Space Industries hope, “that opens up new employment opportunities for astronomers,” Elvis said today in Austin at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Redmond, Wash.-based Planetary Resources’ technology demonstrator satellite for asteroid prospecting is due for launch in early January, along with more than two dozen other satellites, aboard India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
The latest word on the schedule for the PSLV-C40 mission came today from Seattle-based Spaceflight, which is providing launch and mission services for Planetary Resources’ Arkyd-6 and 10 other satellites.
Arkyd-6 is only about the size of an inkjet printer, but it’s designed to capture images in midwave infrared wavelengths and send them back to Earth. The imaging technology is destined to be used in future generations of Planetary Resources’ asteroid-surveying spacecraft.
Planetary Resources has been working on its Arkyd-6 imaging satellite for years, and today the company reported that the printer-sized spacecraft has finally begun its journey to an Indian launch pad.
Arkyd-6 is considered a technology trailblazer for the asteroid-observing probes that Planetary Resources plans to build at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash.
The company’s first demonstrator satellite, the Arkyd-3R, was deployed from the International Space Station’s Kibo airlock in 2015. The Arkyd-6 is twice as big, and is expected to provide Earth imagery in the midwave infrared slice of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Lawmakers in the tiny European country of Luxembourg today approved a measure affirming that space resources can be privately owned. The law, adopted nearly unanimously by Luxembourg’s parliament, also sets up procedures for authorizing and supervising space exploration missions. It will go into force on Aug. 1. Planetary Resources – which is headquartered in Redmond, Wash., but has a Luxembourg-based subsidiary – hailed today’s action as further evidence of the nation’s status as a global leader in the space resources sector.
Luxembourg’s royal heir and its top economic official got the grand tour of the Seattle area today, deepening a business relationship that could someday turn far-flung asteroids into the next commercial frontier.
“The exciting field of space technology could enable many more partnerships and economic success stories between Luxembourg and Seattle,” Prince Guillaume told a VIP gathering at Seattle’s Space Needle.
Luxembourg?
Don’t underestimate the tiny country nestled between Belgium, Germany and France: Over the past few decades, Luxembourg has built itself into a financial powerhouse as well as a center for Europe’s satellite industry. Now Luxembourg’s government and investment companies are aiming to do it again, with asteroid mining.
Asteroid mining?
Luxembourg’s Crown Prince Guillaume and Deputy Prime Minister Étienne Schneider will be leading a delegation from the tiny European nation on a trip to the Seattle area on Monday. The main attraction? Asteroid mining, of course. Last year, Planetary Resources struck a deal for $28 million in investment and grants from Luxembourg’s government and bankers. Planetary Resources, based in Redmond, Wash., is developing spacecraft for Earth observation as well as asteroid exploration and mining. By some accounts, mining asteroids for water and other space resources could turn into a multitrillion-dollar industry. That fits in with Luxembourg’s SpaceResources.lu initiative – which will be in the spotlight in Seattle.
Planetary Resources says it has finalized a $28 million (€25 million) agreement with Luxembourg to ramp up its asteroid mining campaign.
The deal calls for the tiny European nation’s government and one of its top banking institutions, the Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement, to provide €12 million ($13.5 million) in direct capital investment and €13 million ($14.5 million) in grants, Planetary Resources announced today.
George Schmit, an advisory board member of Luxembourg’s SpaceResources.lu initiative, is joining the company’s board of directors. Planetary Resources, which is based in Redmond, Wash., will also establish a European headquarters in Luxembourg.
The agreement follows through on a memorandum of understanding that was announced in June.