Asteroid Miners to Hitch Rides on Richard Branson’s New Rocket

Curt Woodward

Planetary Resources, a startup that hopes to mine precious materials from asteroids, is partnering with a leading name in private space exploration: Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic.

The deal calls for Bellevue, WA-based Planetary Resources to use Virgin Galactics new LauncherOne spacecraft to send constellations of its telescopes into orbit near the Earth.

Those telescopes are the first wave of Planetary Resources long-ne valuable matne valuable materials from asteroids located close (in galactic terms) to the planet.

After identifying regets with telesgets with telescope satellites, the young company plans to send robotic mining craft to the asteroids to extract the goods.

Heres a mockup of the telescope satellite that Planetary Resources displayed at its announcement... [via Xconomy]