Planetary Resource's Arkyd Almost Ready For Space Prospecting

 Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources has recently shared their progress on the Arkyd space telescope they are developing to search for suitable asteroid mining targets. Presented by Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, you can see one of the full scale Arkyd-100 mechanical prototypes.

Planetary Resources, the new company that plans on mining asteroids, has recently shared their progress on the Arkyd space telescope they are developing to search for suitable targets.

In the video below presented by Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, you can see one of the full scale Arkyd-100 mechanical prototypes. The Arkyd-100 is to be used as Planetary Resource's space telescope and technology demonstrator for the Arkyd Series prospecting missions.

Much of the telescope has been designed and built in-house by the team at Planetary Resources. This is much the same way that Elon Musk and SpaceX have vertically integrated to drive innovation, control reliability, and keep costs down. This mindset and capability will allow the company to mass produce spacecraft at extremely low cost.

The Arkyd-100 is extremely small, and this will potentially cut the cost of deep space missions below anything the public has become accustomed to.

Planetary Resources put an incredible amount into 11 kg, from deployable solar arrays, to the integrated avionics bay, and an instrument and sensor package at the back of the comparatively large optical assembly, that dominates the volume of the spacecraft.  There has also been a lot of work put into the software driving all of these components.

According to Lewicki, the Arkyd-100 is the most advanced spacecraft per kilogram that exists today. "We’re drawing on our experience from traditional and private space exploration and combining it with exponential technology developments of the past few years and those to come in the next few years. With all of this we’re raising the bar on spacecraft design above anything that’s been done before."

The video also includes a tour of the Planetary Resources manufacturing facility, where they are building additional configuration prototypes. Using computer-controlled machining to create single piece parts that serve as major structural elements of the Arkyd-100 series, the engineers are driving simplicity and tight integration into the vehicle. The company's goal is evolve a process that allows just a few staff to deliver a finished spacecraft in a very short period of time.

Planetary Resources plans to share more information as they get closer to launching the first of their spacecraft.  More information is available from their media site.

What excites you most about the progress towards creating the Arkyd-100 series, the first commercial spacecraft capable of venturing into deep space?



SOURCE  Planetary Resources

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