Tag Archives: planetary-resources
Insert Coin: Planetary Resources ARKYD space telescope will take your selfies from space in 2015
We’ve seen the Arkyd 100 telescope before, Planetary Resources’ impressively small asteroid-hunting machine that offers performance matching any on-earth scope (yes, even the really big ones on the tops of mountains) in a package that’s about the size of a quarter keg of beer. Its length of 425mm fully deployed (16.7 inches) is absolutely dwarfed by Earth’s current great orbital scope: the Hubble Space Telescope, which is 13.2 meters (or 43 feet) long. The space shuttle cargo bay could carry a single Hubble into orbit. If it were still operating, it could take a thousand Arkyd 100 scopes in a single shot.
But, of course, it isn’t still operating, which is perhaps partly why Planetary Resources is looking for $1 million in earthly support. The extra-orbital mining company has turned to Kickstarter to raise a little early funding and to help get its first fully functional Arkyd 100 scope into orbit. If you jump in early, you can get your face in orbit too — well, a picture of it anyway. More details after the break.
Gallery: Planetary Resources ARKYD
Filed under: Science
Source: Kickstarter
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Insert Coin: Planetary Resources ARKYD space telescope will take your selfies from space in 2015
Planetary Resources shows off Arkyd-100 prototype, gives a tour of its workspace
We last heard about Planetary Resources back in April of last year, when the team formally announced plans to mine asteroids for things like water and precious metals like platinum. Chris Lewicki, who sports the unspeakably cool title of president and chief asteroid miner, assures us all that his team has been very hard at work in the interim. While he’s not quite ready to show everything off just yet (due, in part, to intellectual property concerns), the space executive gave the internet a glimpse of the Arkyd-100 mechanical prototype, a space telescope and technology demonstrator packed into a dense 11 kilograms.
In the below video, Lewicki give a quick walk around the lightweight, low-cost prototype. There’s also a glimpse of the of the company’s Class 10,000 clean room and Arkyd-100 manufacturing facility.
Filed under: Science
Source: Planetary Resources
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Planetary Resources shows off Arkyd-100 prototype, gives a tour of its workspace
