Title | Robotic Asteroid Mining Spacecraft Wins a Grant From NASA | |
Date | Saturday June 15 2019, @06:24PM | |
Author | janrinok | |
Topic | ||
from the we've-made-a-mess-here,-lets-go-to-space dept. |
Submitted via IRC for RandomFactor
Robotic asteroid mining spacecraft wins a grant from NASA - Universe Today
Back in April, NASA once again put out the call for proposals for the next generation of robotic explorers and missions. As part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, this consisted of researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs coming together to submit early studies of new concepts that could one-day help advance NASA's space exploration goals.
One concept that was selected for Phase III of development was a breakthrough mission and flight system called Mini Bee. This small, robotic mining craft was designed by the Trans Astronautica (TransAstra) Corporation to assist with deep-space missions. It is hoped that by leveraging this flight system architecture, the Mini-bee will enable the full-scale industrialization of space as well as human settlement.
The Mini-bee concept is essentially a technology-demonstrator for a family of flight system architectures known as Asteroid Provided In-situ Supplies (Apis). These systems range in size from the experimental Mini Bee (which weighs 250 kg or 550 lbs) to the larger Honey Bee and Queen Bee – which would be capable of capturing asteroids measuring 10 and 40 m (33 and 130 ft) in diameter, respectively.
The Mini Bee utilizes a series of innovative technologies, which includes optical mining method of resource harvesting (aka. laser mining), a spacecraft architecture that relies on sunlight to enable faster spacecraft, and an asteroid containment system similar to the one that was proposed for NASA's now-scrapped Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).
Further Reading: NASA, TransAstra Corporation
Links |
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