Mining asteroids sounds ridiculous the first time you hear about it but a few companies intend to do just that.

Two private companies announced they intend to go ahead with their asteroid mining plans. Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries both received contracts from NASA to further study asteroid redirection.

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Planetary Resources, a U.S. company based in Washington State, will deploy two testbed satellites, Arkyd 3 and Arkyd 6, to examine the systems and design of their planned space-based telescopes.

The company plans to build a series of small to mid-size space telescopes that will examine near-Earth asteroids for economic potential. Among their planned telescopes are the Arkyd 100, Arkyd 200, and Arkyd 300.

The Arkyd 100 series will be a low Earth orbit telescope capable of examining both the Earth and potential asteroid targets.

Arkyd 200 is designed as an interceptor, and will have propulsion systems capable of finding asteroids travelling between the Earth and the Moon.

Arkyd 300 will carry upgraded propulsion systems that allow it to explore beyond Earth and the Moon.

Deep Space Industries plans to build a series of compact spacecraft known as FireFlies. The company plans to send these satellites on one-way missions to collect information like the size, shape, density and composition of asteroids.

Their longer term plan includes building a spacecraft known as the "Dragonfly" that will capture asteroids and the "Harvestors" that will gather asteroid material for return to Earth.

Meanwhile, NASA commissioned a number of studies on the potential for asteroid mining. The Robotic Asteroid Prospector study discovered that water and possibly platinum group metals present the most profitable potential for asteroid mining operations.

NASA has been studying robotic mining for the past years and conducts an annual competition where university students build asteroid mining robots.

Tagsasteroid, Mining, asteroid mining, space exploration, NASA, spacecraft, FireFlies, mining robot