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Humanity's race to mine asteroids and unlock boundless resources in deep space. Trailblazing companies spearhead cutting-edge engineering to potentially reshape the future.
2021
Part 1 explains Asteroids and our relationship with them over the decades: NASA’s Dawn mission that revealed the secrets of the Asteroid Belt, plus ESA & JAXA’s missions that actually landed to study them in the 2000’s - and most importantly, NASA’s current OSIRIS-REx mission and their 2021 Lucy launch, to Jupiter’s trojans. Finally - explore a shocking discovery from 2017: Oumuamua, the first interstellar object detected from another star system to come this close to the Earth, and learn about the properties that asteroids contain that make them essential for deep-space travel.
Part 2 explores which are the best asteroids to mine - and how? In Space, using Zero Gravity - or on Earth? How can their metals and the liquids be used for deep space exploration, as propellant or pit stops - and are any of the metals useful on Earth? With a visit to the Colorado Center of Space Resources, we explore the engineering and technology needed to extract materials from the asteroids. We reveal the three top companies in the race - TransAstra and their autonomous spacecrafts, OffWorld and their autonomous mining robots, and Atem Engineering, who find solutions for discovery and assessment of Near-Earth Asteroids. Their goal is to extract and utilize resources in space to pave the way for human exploration - and the new space race is getting started.
