Jones, Andrew. “China to Launch Space Mining Bot.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, 16 Sept. 2020, 16:00 GMT, spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/satellites/china-to-launch-space-mining-bot.
Article title:
China to Launch Space Mining Bot
Photo: Xinhua/Zheng Taotao/Getty Images
My summary of the article:
Origin Space, a Chinese private space resources company focused on the utilization on space resources, has plans to launch its first space resources mining robot – Neo-1 – in the coming November. This mining robot, however, will be testing technologies and functions such as "spacecraft orbital maneuver", simulated small celestial body capture, and intelligent spacecraft identification and control". Origin Space has another mission to launch in 2021 – Yuanwang-1, nicknamed "Little Hubble". Yuanwang-1 is a satellite created to make observations of mineable asteroids near Earth. Yuanwang-1 will aid Origin Space by providing information regarding suitable targets for space mining; since asteroid mining has the potential to become a massive economic industry, it is no surprise that Origin Space not only focuses on mining space material but also does so on developing rockets and satellites for space mining.
Experts, however, claim that space resources companies like Origin Space will face many difficulties and challenges, mainly due to the lack of demand for their service. Indeed, space agencies like NASA will purchase their service. But that would be it (in fact, NASA is literally the only contract Origin Space had been able to see). This is not only the case for Origin Space. Other space resources companies earlier than Origin Space are facing the same problem, whereby the demand for their services are very limited. Due to this, many space resources companies are either giving up or diverging to developing satellites as their main service.
My response to the article:
It is very unfortunate that the high potential of space resources companies is not being recognized by many, causing them to diverge to other areas such as satellite development. Perhaps in the near future this view will change and the high potential of such companies will be recognized, but I agree with the claim that it is, at current stake, realistically impossible for space agencies to be interested in space resources since asteroid-material holds not much value today.
This does not mean that all space resources companies including Origin Space must give up on their business. Just as petroleum (oil) was considered as murky water, but now is considered as "black gold," the asteroid and space material mining industry may be the new blue ocean with hidden value.
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