TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Prospective asteroid miner Planetary Resources has received a $21.1-million investment to deploy and operate Ceres, an advanced earth observation business featuring the first commercial infrared and hyperspectral sensor platform that would be harnessed to better understand and manage humanity’s natural resources.

The Redmond, Washington-based firm advised that earth observation would from now on be another aspect of its operations, complementing its prospecting and mining of asteroids.

Planetary explained that, while typical satellite imagery provided only a picture, Ceres would provide actionable data with higher spectral resolutions – going beyond what the human eye can see – by measuring thermographic properties and detecting the composition of materials on the earth’s surface.

The imaging technology would be integrated onto the company’s proprietary Arkyd spacecraft and deployed as a constellation of ten satellites in low-earth orbit.

“As we continue toward our vision of the expansion of humanity and our economy into the solar system, our team has been working on the critical technologies required to detect and identify the most commercially viable near-earth asteroids and their resources.

“To characterise these resources, it required more than just a picture and our team has developed advanced spectral sensors to serve this need. We have also created new technologies for onboard computing and low-cost space platforms, and are now applying these transformative technologies in additional markets,” Planetary president, CEO and chief engineer Chris Lewicki said in a statement on Thursday.

Planetary advised that the constellation would provide global monitoring capability to benefit multiple industries including agriculture, oil and gas, water quality, financial intelligence and forestry. Ceres would be able to analyse the spectral signatures of crops and provide customised information to growers, identify energy and mineral resources, and monitor pipelines and remote infrastructure.

The system would also track toxic algae blooms, monitor global water quality and enable the detection of wildfires in their earliest stages.

The company stated that it was currently testing Ceres’ sensor platform and would demonstrate the technology in space with an upcoming scheduled launch of the company’s Arkyd 6 spacecraft on board a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. The mission would aim to validate the thermographic sensor and supporting technologies for the Arkyd series of spacecrafts.

Planetary also announced Thursday that it would not continue with a project that would have allowed backers of a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter platform to take 'space selfie' pictures with the company’s space telescopes. Lewicki said all 17 614 backers would be offered full refunds.

Planetary Resources successfully deployed its first spacecraft into orbit from the International Space Station in July last year, marking one of many milestones that bring its mission of prospecting and mining asteroids closer to fruition.

Lewicki considered asteroid mining a first and key step to the eventual colonisation and commercialisation of space. Planetary would first aim for the low-hanging fruit – the near-earth asteroids of which some 13 000 had been identified to date. The company had estimated that these could contain up to 42-trillion tons of resources including nickel, iron-ore and precious metals at much higher grades than those found on Earth.

In a previous interview with Mining Weekly Online, Lewicki noted that many of these asteroids contained significant amounts of water which, in space, could be split relatively easily into its constituent molecules to make rocket fuel.