A space startup says nearby asteroids can be mined for water, platinum, and other natural resources to enable space exploration and bring those valuable materials to Earth. 
 
 The first step in Planetary Resources space missions: prospecting by telescope to determine resources available on near-Earth asteroids. (Credit: Planetary Resources) 
 
 Space startup Planetary Resources today launched an ambitious plan to capture water and precious metals from near-Earth asteroids, a feat founders say would enrich earthbound society and enable further space exploration 
 
 The two-year-old company announced its plans at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where its founders said that technology has advanced to the point that space-mining valuable natural resources is now economically feasible. 
 
 Some asteroids that pass near the Earth may hold water -- a vital commodity for making spacecraft fuel and supporting the lives of astronauts. And that's just the beginning. A single 500-meter-wide asteroid could contain more platinum than has ever been mined on Earth, the company claims. 
 
 Planetary Resources' plan to mine asteroids 
 
 "Everything we hold of value on Earth -- energy, minerals, metals, real estate, water -- is literally available in near infinite quantities in space," said co-founder Peter Diamandis, a futurist and CEO of the X Prize Foundation. "We're going to change the way the world thinks about natural resources." 
 
 Technology and business changes give Planetary Resources a better chance at succeeding on its asteroid mining vision than the people who have failed over the past decades, Diamandis said. 
 
 Cheaper electronics, robotics, and artificial intelligence allow for machines that can operate autonomous mining missions in space. Also, commercial space travel from companies such as Space X gives Planetary Resources a route to reach space. 
 
 Finally, there are many well-heeled investors willing to invest in a small group of people who have access to these powerful technologies, he said. The company's advisers and investors include Google CEO Larry Page, former CEO Eric Schmidt, and former Microsoft chief software architect and space tourist Charles Simonyi. 
 
 Broadly speaking, the company's plan is to identify the most valuable near-Earth asteroids, extract valuable materials, and then deliver them to a specific location. That material could be brought back to Earth or delivered to an orbiting fuel depot in space, said co-founder and space engineer Eric Anderson. 
 
 "This will be a seminal event in entrepreneurial space and moving off the planet," he said. 
 
 Lower-cost designs 
 
 The company's intention is to send its first telescope, the Arkyd 100 series, into low-Earth orbit by the end of next year. Using optical spectroscopy, it will seek to determine the chemical makeup of asteroids approaching the Earth. Its second telescope will gain the ability to propel itself using solar panels to get closer to its targets. 
 
 Its third-generation robotic spacecraft will be deployed in "swarms" of half a dozen to approach an asteroid and land on it for mining, explained company president and chief engineer Peter Lewicki, who is a veteran of NASA's Mars programs. By deploying multiple spacecraft, the company hopes to improve the redundancy of the system and improve the chances of success. 
 
 The third-generation spacecraft design would launch a "swarm" of about five or ten craft to actually extract resources. This would happen next decade at the earliest. (Credit: Planetary Resources) 
 
 The company's goal is to identify those asteroids suitable for mining by the end of the decade, executives said. There are millions of asteroids of different sizes which come close to Earth, but their chemical makeup can be very different. 
 
 The most valuable ones appear to be the carbonaceous condrite asteroids which have water and loose rock which would not be difficult to collect. Water would be extracted by heating up mud and separating the water, said Thomas Jones, a NASA veteran and one of the company's advisers, which also includes film director James Cameron, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft David Vaskevitch, and the CEO of the Planetary Science Institute. 
 
 The value of natural resources in a single asteroid can be hundreds of millions of dollars, executives said. The company estimates that extracting 20 percent of the hydrogen and oxygen from a single carbonaceous chondrite asteroid about 50 meters across is enough propellant for all of the Space Shuttle flights. 
 
 "You don't have to run through detailed calculations to realize that a smallish asteroid has extraordinary value if you find the right kind," said Anderson. 
 
 The core challenge for the audacious venture, which is taking on a number of risky tasks, is to keep its costs low. Lewicki said the spacecraft designs will be an order of magnitude cheaper than existing spacecraft. It intends to launch its spacecraft into space by attaching itself on existing missions, a "ride share" approach to keep its costs under control. 
 
 "There's a rising tide going on in commercial space exploration. There are extraordinary investors willing to invest in launch technologies, lunar missions, asteroid missions," said Diamandis. "Capital has always been the scarcest part of space exploration and this changes the equation and allows us to go much faster and much farther than before." 
 
 Updated at 12:55 p.m. PT with additional details. ||||| Space-faring robots could be extracting gold and platinum from asteroids within 10 years if a new venture backed by two Silicon Valley titans and filmmaker James Cameron goes as planned. 
 
 Outside experts are skeptical about the project, announced Tuesday at a news conference in Seattle, because it would likely require untold millions or perhaps billions of dollars and huge advances in technology. But the same entrepreneurs pioneered the selling of space rides to tourists _ a notion that seemed fanciful not long ago, too. 
 
 "Since my early teenage years, I've wanted to be an asteroid miner. I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go," Peter Diamandis, one of the founders of Planetary Resources, told reporters at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The company's vision "is to make the resources of space available to humanity." 
 
 The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for the right type of asteroids. 
 
 The plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals out of the rocks that routinely whiz by Earth. Company leaders predict they could have their version of a space-based gas station up and running by 2020. 
 
 Several scientists not involved in the project said they were simultaneously thrilled and wary, calling the plan daring, difficult _ and very pricey. They don't see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly $1,600 an ounce. An upcoming NASA mission to return just 2 ounces (60 grams) of an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1 billion. 
 
 But the entrepreneurs behind Planetary Resources Inc. have a track record of profiting off space ventures. Diamandis and co-founder Eric Anderson pioneered the idea of selling rides into space to tourists, and Diamandis' company offers "weightless" airplane flights. 
 
 Investors and advisers to the new company include Google CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Cameron, the man behind the blockbusters "Titanic" and "Avatar." 
 
 Anderson says the group will prove naysayers wrong. "Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," Anderson said. "We're in this for decades. But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning." 
 
 The mining, fuel processing and later refueling would all be done without humans, Anderson said. 
 
 "It is the stuff of science fiction, but like in so many other areas of science fiction, it's possible to begin the process of making them reality," said former astronaut Thomas Jones, an adviser to the company. 
 
 The target-hunting telescopes would be tubes only a couple of feet long, weighing only a few dozen pounds and small enough to be held in your hand. They should cost less than $10 million, company officials said. 
 
 The idea that asteroids could be mined for resources has been around for years. Asteroids are the leftovers of a failed attempt to form a planet billions of years ago. Most of the remnants became the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but some pieces were pushed out to roam the solar system. 
 
 Asteroids are made mostly of rock and metal and range from a couple of dozen feet wide to nearly 10 miles long. The new venture targets the free-flying asteroids, seeking to extract from them the rare Earth platinum metals that are used in batteries, electronics and medical devices, Diamandis said. 
 
 Water can be broken down in space to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. Water is very expensive to get off the ground so the plan is to take it from an asteroid to a spot in space where it can be converted into fuel. From there, it can easily and cheaply be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spaceships from NASA and other countries. 
 
 In the past couple of years, NASA and other space agencies have shifted their attention from the moon and other planets toward asteroids. Because asteroids don't have any substantial gravity, targeting them costs less fuel and money than going to the moon, Anderson said in a phone interview. 
 
 There are probably 1,500 asteroids that pass near Earth that would be good initial targets. They are at least 160 feet (50 meters) wide, and Anderson figures 10 percent of them have water and other valuable minerals. 
 
 "A depot within a decade seems incredible. I hope there will be someone to use it," said Andrew Cheng at John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab, who was the chief scientist for a NASA mission to an asteroid a decade ago. "And I have high hopes that commercial uses of space will become profitable beyond Earth orbit. Maybe the time has come." 
 
 Diamandis and Anderson would not disclose how much the project will cost overall. By building and launching quickly, their company hopes to operate much more cheaply than NASA. 
 
 Harvard's Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center, said getting drilling equipment into space and operating safely sounds "expensive and difficult." 
 
 "It would be awfully hard to make money on it," Spahr said. 
 
 Richard Binzel, professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the effort "may be many decades ahead of its time. But you have to start somewhere." 
 
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 Borenstein reported from Washington. 
 
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 Online: 
 
 Planetary Resources Inc.: http://www.planetaryresources.com/ 
 
 NASA's 2016 asteroid sampling mission: http://osiris-rex.lpl.arizona.edu/ 
 
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 Seth Borenstein, who reported from Washington, can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
– It's official, earthlings: The world's first asteroid-mining company has launched. Planetary Resources had its official coming out party today, the AP reports, with its co-founders laying out their plan to mine outer space for precious metal. The company, which is backed by such big-name investors as James Cameron and the Google Guys, says that in just 18 to 24 months it will start launching private space telescopes to identify asteroids rich in raw materials. "Everything we hold of value on Earth—energy, minerals, metals, real estate, water—is literally available in near infinite quantities in space," said co-founder Peter Diamandis, who, CNET points out, also is CEO of the X Prize Foundation. Some experts doubt that mining near-earth asteroids can possibly be cost-effective, but co-founder Eric Anderson pointed out that skeptics said the same thing about space tourism, which he and Diamandis pioneered. "We're in this for decades," he said. "But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning."