Asteroid Gold Rush in Space

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With the mineral exploration in space becoming an extremely lucrative business, will the Indian private companies wait for the enactment of India's Space Law? And should they? On January 22, 2013, Deep Space Industries announced plans for a fleet of spacecraft whose job will be to harvest the rich resources found in asteroids.

Experts say that there are more natural resources on asteroids than have ever been mined in the history of the Earth. For example, a spherical asteroid dubbed 1999JU3, about 1km wide, is speculated to contain organic matter and water. And a Japanese exploration satellite will arrive at this asteroid in 2018, fire a projectile into the asteroid to blast off material, gather the loose material, and then return to Earth.

An American company, Deep Space Industries, is building a fleet of asteroid mining space craft to exploit the mineral riches of the space. The first of its exploration probes, said to be as small as a toaster, will be launched this year.

Chinese scientists are targeting the Moon, which contains various minerals (such as iron, gold, platinum and tungsten, as well as the incredibly rare Helium-3), valued at up to $90,000 per ounce.

But unlike the space race till now, mineral exploration in outer space would be run mostly by private companies, and not nations. Indian private companies such as Reliance Industries and Essar Oil who are into oil and gas exploration in deep sea will not be far behind in this race.

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

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