Tags: Telescope, NASA, Near-Earth Asteroids
Publication: RedOrbit.com
Publication Date: 01/22/2013

Click on the image to view Planetary Resources video about the Arkyd-100 telescope. Image credit: Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources, an asteroid mining company supported by high-profile investors such as film director James Cameron, and Google front men Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, has unveiled the prototype of a new space telescope it plans to launch in 2014.

The telescope, Arkyd-100, is expected to help the company identify targets for harvesting precious metals and water from Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs). The prototype was unveiled by Planetary Resources’ President, Chris Lewicki, on a video posted on their website. In it, he describes the basics of the small telescope and its external structure, but didn’t go into detail about its internal components or how it works.

The 24-pound Arkyd-100 will feature an integrated avionics bay, deployable solar arrays, sensor package and optical assembly. The latter is supposed to be able to capture images across a wide range of wavelengths, while enabling laser communications. According to Lewicki, Planetary Resources is developing some of this technology for NASA.

The company is simultaneously building other prototypes to learn the best solutions to reduce assembly, integration and testing costs. The company is doing this with the idea of mass-producing the telescope.

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