Washington DC
A PROBE funded by commercial investors will visit an asteroid within three
years. That, at least, is the claim of Colorado software mogul James William
Benson, who is planning a $50 million space mission.
Benson and his backers aim to recoup their investment by selling scientific
results to NASA and other space agencies. But they also intend to stake their
claim to the asteroid, and mine it for minerals when the technology becomes
available. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to see a revolution in entrepreneurial space
development,鈥� Benson claims.
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Benson is the founder of three companies that design software to manage
documents and search text. His new company, called SpaceDev, is being advised by
James Arnold, a geochemist at the University of California, San Diego, and a
veteran of NASA鈥檚 Apollo project. The probe will feature a camera plus a neutron
spectrometer to detect water vapour escaping from the asteroid. A third
instrument, called an alpha-X-ray-proton-spectrometer, will be dropped to
the asteroid鈥檚 surface to analyse its composition. When these results are
compared with the camera pictures, it may become possible to determine the
composition of other asteroids for which similar images are available.
NASA is taking Benson seriously. 鈥淚t is an exciting concept because it鈥檚 the
first truly commercial proposal for planetary exploration,鈥� says Wesley
Huntress, NASA鈥檚 associate administrator for space science.
If SpaceDev鈥檚 plans come to fruition, they will open up a new frontier for
law, as well as for space science. International treaties prevent nations from
staking a claim to a heavenly body. But the status of any private company鈥檚
claim is unclear.
Benson says he hasn鈥檛 chosen which near-Earth asteroid he will land on, or
which company he will buy a launch from. But he says he has raised most of the
money required.