Компанія з аерокосмічної галузі в Лонг-Біч робить ставку на новий промисловий бум: захоплення астероїдів

Це як стріляти кулею в іншу кулю.

За винятком того, що ці дві — одна розміром із причіп, а друга заввишки як Емпайр-стейт-білдінг — розділені тисячами миль і рухаються зі швидкістю 7,000 миль на годину.

Це ставка на мільйони доларів і професійну репутацію компанії ExLabs з Лонг-Біча в тому, що вона не промахнеться.

Компанія, яка працює з 30,000-квадратного-футового складу неподалік від аеропорту Лонг-Біча, планує спроєктувати космічний апарат, запуск якого має відбутися в квітні 2028 року. Її ціль: пролітний астероїд.

Запуск відбудеться тоді, коли астероїд буде максимально близьким до Землі — приблизно за 32,000 кілометрів — і, занурюючись нижче орбіт супутників, стане достатньо близьким, щоб його можна було побачити неозброєним оком.

З моменту запуску до того, як корабель наздожене астероїд на ім’я Апофіс, мине рік: поки він пролітатиме повз планети й зробить петлю назад, мета — встановити контакт 13 квітня 2029 року.

Астероїд, який первісно виявили у 2004 році, не очікують, що він повернеться знову аж до 2036 року.

«Ми просто обрали саме це, бо це такий унікальний час і момент в історії людства», — сказав співзасновник ExLabs Джеймс Орсулак. «Ми не можемо промахнутися».

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The operation, given that it takes place so far from the planet (some 100 million kilometers away), will be largely autonomous. Crews will give orders based on data sent back to Earth, though there will be a delay.

Once in contact, the payload items will be launched from the craft onto the asteroid and will, over time, study the hurtling rock for its composition, origin and other data. It’s a one-way flight; the spacecraft will stay for the remainder of its lifespan (3 to 5 years).

The company’s funding comes from a mix of grants and contracts through the U.S. Space Force, Air Force, NASA, and JPL. They also have several design contracts through their robotics team.

Financing their missions, explained co-founder and chief finance officer Freyr Thor, comes from a patchwork of business partners and customers, clients and civil agencies that pay to send “payloads” that can collect data on their behalf during the mission’s operation.

It’s the hope of ExLabs’ dozen or so employees that this will be the earliest model for a burgeoning industry of capturing, studying and mining asteroids.

Their business would delve largely into the first category. There’s a lot a telescope can’t tell you about a planet or asteroid. For the longest time, scientists have used the reflection of light to judge composition.

«We’re looking to understand what is the internal structure, and specifically, what is the internal structure, and what are the changes happening as it passes through Earth’s gravity field,» Orsulak said.

Within the next decade, the company hopes to develop spacecraft to capture and retrieve asteroids that can be studied or prospected for rare earth materials, which are vital to medical devices, hand-held electronics and computers.

The models, they say, would be standardized, built using 3-D printers within a matter of months and scaled up to 10 times as large.

Unlike comets, asteroids are iceless, rocky bodies left over from the creation of the solar system. Most are so-called main-belt asteroids, moving in nearly circular orbits between those around Mars and Jupiter. But there are also asteroids whose orbits bring them close to Earth. It is these — about 41,000 so far known — that most intrigue Orsulak.

While Apophis is expected to be made of some nickel and rock, other near-Earth asteroids are potentially packed with valuable minerals like cobalt, gallium, platinum and chromium.

It’s an industry that could one day total billions of dollars, and put an end to mining on Earth, Orsulak thinks, as privately managed companies could scour space as the first real example of human exploration into the solar system, and tow their bounties back to the moon’s orbit.

Asteroids would be mined in the moon’s orbit as part of a scientific and commercial park, by spacecraft that are meant to stay in space for all of their needs, from refueling to gathering water.

«It’s the beginning of a reversal of Earth’s supply chain,» Orsulak said. «There’s no reason to mine Earth when you have access to truly infinite resources in space.»

It’s an idea that, since the early 1970s, has captured the imagination of scientists, engineers, politicians and writers, touted as the answer to the world’s increasing hunger for diminishing resources.

It’s also a personal mission for Orsulak, who began his career with Planetary Resources, a similar but short-lived venture in the early 2000s that drew an A-list of investors and advisors, including Google Chief Executive Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt, «Avatar» director James Cameron and Microsoft’s former chief software architect Charles Simonyi.

«They succeeded in establishing the legal framework to work on asteroid resources, (such as) how do you own resources captured from an asteroid under US law,» Orsulak said.

There is also the matter of defense against asteroids. Orsulak is among the scientists who believe that it was a large asteroid, perhaps six miles in diameter, that did in the dinosaurs when it struck the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, plunging Earth into cold and darkness.

He’s not too keen on letting that moment repeat itself.

«When you have an asteroid that’s threatening the planet, how do you move it? How do you redirect it?» Orsulak asked.

«Humanity has the opportunity to start to do kind of bigger, harder things in space.»

Цю історію спочатку опублікував Long Beach Post, а поширили в межах партнерства з The Associated Press.