Mining company Deep Space Industries (DSI) plans to send a space reconnaissance vehicle to search for resources in celestial bodies by the end of the decade, which will be one of the first commercial missions outside Earth's orbit.
Prior to that, Deep Space will launch a pilot mission in partnership with the Luxembourg government, which was announced last May. The mission is planned to be launched in 2017, where the Geolog-X series device will test the key technologies needed to reduce the cost of developing extraterrestrial production.
Geologists believe that asteroids contain deposits of iron ore, nickel and precious metals in significantly higher concentrations than on Earth, worth trillions of dollars.
The Geolog-1 satellite weighing 50 kg was designed to visit a nearby asteroid and look for deposits of water ice that could be mined and used as fuel for other spacecraft in the future.
The company did not disclose the exact timing of the Geolog-1 mission, but reports that it has allocated several windows for dispatch between 2019 and 2022, depending on the asteroids chosen to visit.
Deep Space will launch its first commercial mission by 2020
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