Video Caption

Problem: If humanity is to move off Earth and become an interplanetary species, it will need an economic reason to do so.

Solution: Near-earth asteroids contain (literally) trillions of dollars worth of resources and materials that could be harvested and brought back to Earth. A number of them are also energetically easier to get to than the surface of the Moon. That tremendous bounty creates a huge incentive for the private sector to create the requisite detection, propulsion and harvesting technology to capture these precious metals and minerals.

Technology: Planetary resources led by Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson is developing the technology and spacecraft to detect, harvest, capture and bring back these resources from Near-Earth asteroids.

Credit: Golden Spike Company

By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

With human flights beyond Earth orbit not expected to occur for at least eight years, the private sector is increasingly eying deep space for a series of ambitious robotic and human missions for both adventure and profit.

Nine programs are currently underway that include robotic and human landings of the moon, human flybys of the moon and Mars, the mining of the moon and asteroids, and even a settlement on Mars. Backers of these initiatives include the X Prize Foundation, Google and its executives, and the world’s first space tourist, Dennis Tito.

The table below show the deep space initiatives now being pursued by the private sector.

Commercial Lunar and Deep Space Programs
	Companies/ Teams	Mission/ Goal	Key Personnel & Backers	Technology	Schedule
	Planetary Resources	Asteroid Mining	Peter Diamandis, Eric Anderson, Chris Lewicki, Tom Jones, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, James Cameron, Charles Simonyi, K. Ram Shriram, Ross Perot, Jr.	Arkyd-100 Arkyd-200 Arkyd-300	2013 or 2014 (first launches)
	Deep Space Industries	Asteroid Mining	Rick Tumlinson, David Gump, Steven Covey, John Lewis, Mark Sonter, Geoffrey Notkin	FireFlies DragonFlies MicroGravity Foundry	2015 (first launch)
	Angelicum, Astrobotic, ARCA, Barcelona Moon Team, Euroluna, FREDNET, JURBAN, Independence-X, Moon Express, Omega Envoy, Part-Time Scientists, Penn State Lunar Lion Team, Plan B, Selenokhod, SpaceMETA, Synergy Moon, Team Indus, Team Italia, Team Phoenicia, Team Puli, Team SpaceIL, Team Stellar, White Label Space	$30 Million Google Lunar X Prize	X Prize Foundation, Google, 23 Private Teams	Lunar landers and rovers	Prize expires Dec. 31, 2015
	Space Adventures & Energia	Space tourism flight around the moon	Eric Anderson	Modified Soyuz transport	NLT January 2017
	Inspiration Mars Foundation	Human flyby of Mars	Dennis Tito, Taber MacCallum, Jany Poynter, Jonathan Clark	Possible Falcon Heavy & Dragon	January 2018
	Shackleton Energy Company	Human mining of the moon	James Keravala, Bill Stone, Dale Tietz	TBD	2019
	Mars One	Human settlement on Mars	Bas Lansdorp, Arno Wielders, Bryan Versteeg, Suzanne Flinkenflögel, Norbert Kraft, Eiso Vaandrager, Marieke Wagensveld	Mars habitats	2023 (Human landing on Mars)

All but one of these projects aim to produce concrete results no later than 2020, which is the year before NASA is set to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit on its new Orion spacecraft and SLS booster.

Most of these projects are American initiatives with some foreign participation. The space tourism trip around the moon partners the U.S.-based Space Adventures with Russia’s Energia and makes use of modified Soyuz hardware. The Google Lunar X Prize includes 23 teams around the world, eight of which are based in the United States.

The Soyuz trip around the moon involves one pilot and two customers paying $150 million each. To date, Space Adventures has announced that it had one client committed and was searching for a second one.

Six of the ventures are purely commercial in nature. The Google Lunar X Prize is funded by a for-profit company but run by the non-profit X Prize Foundation. Many of the competitors are commercial entities. The Inspiration Mars Foundation, which aims to send humans on a trip to the Red Planet, is also a non-profit group.

Of the three companies focused on extraterrestrial mining, Planetary Resources has the deepest pockets. Google Co-founder Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt are both multi-billionaires while K. Ram Shriram and Ross Perot, Jr. is worth an estimated $1.6 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively. Charles Simonyi and James Cameron are millionaires.

Mars One is a European-led initiative that would put a small colony on the Red Planet in 2023. It is relying on being able to sell the broadcast rights to the project to cover the $6 billion cost.

Updated on March 9 to include Mars One.

Former Astrobotic Technology President David Gump has resurfaced with a new company, Deep Space Industries, which will announce the “world’s first fleet of commercial asteroid-prospecting spacecraft” during a press conference at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying on Tuesday, Jan. 22.

Deep Space Industries is the second asteroid mining company to make a public announcement in the past year. Planetary Resources — founded by Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson — is aiming for the same market.

Eric Berger over at Space News has more information on the company.

Planetary Resources, a company backed by billionaires who are seeking to make trillions of dollars mining asteroids, wants the public to get involved in its venture. The catch: the public will be expected to fund whatever activities it undertakes.

That’s the message from Planetary Resources Co-founder Peter Diamandis. If the company gets enough suggestions from the public, it was begin a KickStarter campaign to seek donations from the general public to fund them.

“To offer you a chance to actually get involved, we’ve been tossing around the idea of adding additional capacity in our production run, and either offering you access to a portion of our of our orbiting spacecraft – or – if there’s enough demand, actually build you an additional Space Telescope for your own use,” Diamandis wrote in a blog post.

Now, all this is very interesting…

KickStarter is generally for smaller projects that are just getting going and have no significant amounts of funds behind them. That is not the case here. Four out of Planetary Resources five investors are billionaires and the fifth is a former member of Planetary Resources’ billionaires boys’ club.

The fifth investor is Microsoft mogul and two-time ISS space tourist Charles Simonyi, who was on the Forbes list of billionaires until a few years ago.

I realize that crowd sourcing is in right now and it gets people involved and invested in the project. I get that part. There’s some logic there and if the company were a non-profit or some small start-up trying to bootstrap its way up without much money, it would make sense.

But, I don’t think this is quite the right way to go given how much money is behind this project. This just seems like a way to replace a more traditional outreach effort that the company might undertake by getting other people to pay for it. This is also a way to raise funds for the company while clothing it as part of an outreach effort. It’s also a cheap way to figure out what people will pay for without paying anyone to figure that out for you. The message is: we’ll engage the public only if they’re willing to pay us to do so and figure out our marketing strategy for us.

Why not just solicit ideas and fund whatever the company thinks are the best ones out of its own pocket.  Instead of giving a person with $100 to pledge a chance to take a picture of Earth, why n0t run a more traditional STEM that reaches thousands of students who don’t have that kind of money? And why limit it to STEM? Do a business and economics education outreach effort.

An ABC News video about Planetary Resources’ plan to mine asteroids.

Seattle, Wash. – Planetary Resources PR

Resource extraction from asteroids will deliver multiple benefits to humanity and grow to be valued at tens of billions of dollars annually. The effort will tap into the high concentration of precious metals found on asteroids and provide a sustainable supply to the ever-growing population on Earth.

A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the Platinum Group Metals mined in history.

“Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications,” said Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.

Additionally, water-rich NEAs will serve as “stepping stones” for deep space exploration, providing space-sourced fuel and water to orbiting depots.  Accessing water resources in space will revolutionize exploration and make space travel dramatically more economical.

“Water is perhaps the most valuable resource in space. Accessing a water-rich asteroid will greatly enable the large-scale exploration of the solar system. In addition to supporting life, water will also be separated into oxygen and hydrogen for breathable air and rocket propellant,” said Eric Anderson, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.

Of the approximately 9,000 known NEAs, there are more than 1,500 that are energetically as easy to reach as the Moon. The capability to characterize NEAs is on the critical path for Planetary Resources. To that end, the company has developed the first line in its family of deep-space prospecting spacecraft, the Arkyd-100 Series. The spacecraft will be used in low-Earth orbit and ultimately help prioritize the first several NEA targets for the company’s follow-on Arkyd-300 Series NEA swarm expeditions.

Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, said “Our mission is not only to expand the world’s resource base, but we want to increase people’s access to, and understanding of, our planet and solar system by developing capable and cost-efficient systems.”

“The promise of Planetary Resources is to apply commercial innovation to space exploration.  They are developing cost-effective, production-line spacecraft that will visit near-Earth asteroids in rapid succession, increasing our scientific knowledge of these bodies and enabling the economic development of the resources they contain,” said Tom Jones, Ph.D., veteran NASA astronaut, planetary scientist and Planetary Resources, Inc. advisor.

Planetary Resources is financed by industry-launching visionaries, including Google CEO Larry Page and Ross Perot, Jr., Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group, who are committed to expanding the world’s resource base so that humanity can continue to grow and prosper:

• Eric E. Schmidt, Ph.D., Executive Chairman of Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Planetary Resources, Inc. investor: “The pursuit of resources drove the discovery of America and opened the West.  The same drivers still hold true for opening the space frontier.  Expanding the resource base for humanity is important for our future.”

• K. Ram Shriram, Founder of Sherpalo, Google Board of Directors founding member and Planetary Resources, Inc. investor: “I see the same potential in Planetary Resources as I did in the early days of Google.”

• Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Planetary Resources, Inc. investor: “The commercialization of space began with communications satellites and is developing for human spaceflight. The next logical step is to begin the innovative development of resources from space.  I’m proud to be part of this effort.”

The company’s advisors include film maker and explorer James Cameron; General T. Michael Moseley (Ret.); Sara Seager, Ph.D.; Mark Sykes, Ph.D.; and David Vaskevitch.

Founded in 2009 by Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Planetary Resources, Inc. is establishing a new paradigm for resource utilization that will bring the solar system within humanity’s economic sphere of influence by enabling low-cost robotic exploration and eventual commercial development of asteroids.  For more information, please visit www.PlanetaryResources.com.

Illustration of an asteroid retrieval spacecraft in the process of capturing a 7-m, 500-ton asteroid. (Image Credit: Rick Sternbach / KISS)

By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

A new study sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) has concluded that it would be possible to return an asteroid weighing approximately 500 metric tons to high lunar orbit where it would be mined for resources by 2025.

The Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, published on April 2, was prepared for KISS, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Co-leaders of the study included John Brophy of NASA JPL/Caltech, Fred Culick of Caltech, and Louis Friedman of The Planetary Society and participants included representatives of other NASA centers, various universities, institutes and private companies.

The report may provide a preview of what a new company named Planetary Resources spearheaded by the X PRIZE Foundation’s Peter Diamandis will unveil during a press conference in Seattle next Tuesday. Two of the 34 study participants were Planetary Resources President and Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki and former astronaut Tom Jones, who is an adviser to the company. The start-up – which is backed by Google billionaires Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Microsoft mogul Charles Simonyi, filmmaker James Cameron, and Ross Perot, Jr. – says it will “overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.”

Asteroid return mission concept. Return flight time of 2 to 6 years depending on the asteroid mass. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

The study examined the possibility of launching an asteroid retrieval spacecraft aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle, which is already operational. The study calculated the “full life-cycle cost of an asteroid capture and return mission at ~$2.6B[illion].” That cost is likely low enough to the mission could be attractive to private companies like Planetary Resources, providing they can locate an asteroid with sufficient resources to make a profit.

Conceptual spacecraft in the cruise configuration with the capture mechanism deployed. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

Study participants said the mission is feasible and would fit in well with NASA’s long-term objectives for exploring beyond low Earth orbit.

The two major conclusions from the KISS study are: 1) that it appears feasible to identify, capture and return an entire ~7-m diameter, ~500,000-kg near-Earth asteroid to a high lunar orbit using technology that is or could be available in this decade, and 2) that such an endeavor may be essential technically and programmatically for the success of both near-term and long-term human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit….

“The proposed Asteroid Capture and Return mission would impact an impressive range of NASA interests including: the establishment of an accessible, high-value target in cislunar space; near-term operational experience with astronaut crews in the vicinity of an asteroid; a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft return resources for human exploitation and use in space; the potential to jump-start an entire industry based on in situ resource utilization; expansion of international cooperation in space; and planetary defense. It has the potential for cost effectively providing sufficient radiation shielding to protect astronauts from galactic cosmic rays and to provide the propellant necessary to transport the resulting shielded habitats. It would endow NASA and its partners with a new capability in deep space that hasn’t been seen since Apollo. Ever since the completion of the cold-war-based Apollo program there has been no over-arching geo-political rationale for the nation’s space ventures. Retrieving an asteroid for human exploration and exploitation would provide a new rationale for global achievement and inspiration. For the first time humanity would begin modification of the heavens for its benefit.

Below are the report’s Executive Summary and Conclusions sections, which provides a good overview of the study.  You can also read the full report.

Conceptual ACR spacecraft in the stowed configuration. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report describes the results of a study sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) to investigate the feasibility of identifying, robotically capturing, and returning an entire Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) to the vicinity of the Earth by the middle of the next decade. The KISS study was performed by people from Ames Research Center, Glenn Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, Langley Research Center, the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard University, the Naval Postgraduate School, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Southern California, Arkyd Astronautics, Inc., The Planetary Society, the B612 Foundation, and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. The feasibility of an asteroid retrieval mission hinges on finding an overlap between the smallest NEAs that could be reasonably discovered and characterized and the largest NEAs that could be captured and transported in a reasonable flight time. This overlap appears to be centered on NEAs roughly 7 m in diameter corresponding to masses in the range of 250,000 kg to 1,000,000 kg. To put this in perspective, the Apollo program returned 382 kg of Moon rocks in six missions and the OSIRIS-REx mission proposes to return at least 60 grams of surface material from a NEA by 2023. The present study indicates that it would be possible to return a ~500,000-kg NEA to high lunar orbit by around 2025.

Bottom view of the conceptual ACR spacecraft showing the five 10-kW Hall thrusters and the RCS thruster clusters. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

The idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over a hundred years, but only now has the technology become available to make this idea a reality. The feasibility is enabled by three key developments: the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for capture and return; the ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured NEA; and the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s enabling exploration and exploitation of the returned NEA.

Top view of the conceptual ACR spacecraft showing the instrument suite and capture mechanism prior to being deployed. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

Placing a 500-t asteroid in high lunar orbit would provide a unique, meaningful, and affordable destination for astronaut crews in the next decade. This disruptive capability would have a positive impact on a wide range of the nation’s human space exploration interests. It would provide a high-value target in cislunar space that would require a human presence to take full advantage of this new resource. It would offer an affordable path to providing operational experience with astronauts working around and with a NEA that could feed forward to much longer duration human missions to larger NEAs in deep space. It would provide an affordable path to meeting the nation’s goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth object by 2025. It represents a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft retrieve significant quantities of valuable resources for exploitation by astronaut crews to enable human exploration farther out into the solar system. A key example of this is that water or other material extracted from a returned, volatile-rich NEA could be used to provide affordable shielding against galactic cosmic rays. The extracted water could also be used for propellant to transport the shielded habitat. These activities could jump-start an entire in situ resource utilization (ISRU) industry. The availability of a multi-hundred-ton asteroid in lunar orbit could also stimulate the expansion of international cooperation in space as agencies work together to determine how to sample and process this raw material. The capture, transportation, examination, and dissection of an entire NEA would provide valuable information for planetary defense activities that may someday have to deflect a much larger near-Earth object. Finally, placing a NEA in lunar orbit would provide a new capability for human exploration not seen since Apollo. Such an achievement has the potential to inspire a nation. It would be mankind’s first attempt at modifying the heavens to enable the permanent settlement of humans in space.

Conceptual spacecraft with solar arrays folded back to facilitate matching the asteroid’s spin state during the capture process. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

The report that follows outlines the observation campaign necessary to discover and characterize NEAs with the right combination of physical and orbital characteristics that make them attractive targets for return. It suggests that with the right ground-based observation campaign approximately five attractive targets per year could be discovered and adequately characterized. The report also provides a conceptual design of a flight system with the capability to rendezvous with a NEA in deep space, perform in situ characterization of the object and subsequently capture it, de-spin it, and transport it to lunar orbit in a total flight time of 6 to 10 years. The transportation capability would be enabled by a ~40-kW solar electric propulsion system with a specific impulse of 3,000 s. Significantly, the entire flight system could be launched to low-Earth orbit on a single Atlas V-class launch vehicle. With an initial mass to low-Earth orbit (IMLEO) of 18,000 kg, the subsequent delivery of a 500-t asteroid to lunar orbit represents a mass amplification factor of about 28-to-1. That is, 28 times the mass launched to LEO would be delivered to high lunar orbit, where it would be energetically in a favorable location to support human exploration beyond cislunar space. Longer flight times, higher power SEP systems, or a target asteroid in a particularly favorable orbit could increase the mass amplification factor from 28-to-1 to 70-to-1 or greater. The NASA GRC COMPASS team estimated the full life-cycle cost of an asteroid capture and return mission at ~$2.6B.

Conceptual flight system configuration before deployment of the capture mechanism showing the locations of the cameras on the solar array yokes used to verify proper deployment and subsequently to aid in the asteroid capture. (Source: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

CONCLUSIONS

The two major conclusions from the KISS study are: 1) that it appears feasible to identify, capture and return an entire ~7-m diameter, ~500,000-kg near-Earth asteroid to a high lunar orbit using technology that is or could be available in this decade, and 2) that such an endeavor may be essential technically and programmatically for the success of both near-term and long-term human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. One of the key challenges – the discovery and characterization of a sufficiently large number of small asteroids of the right type, size, spin state and orbital characteristics – could be addressed by a low-cost, ground-based observation campaign identified in the study. To be an attractive target for return the asteroid must be a C-type approximately 7 m in diameter, have a synodic period of approximately 10 years, and require a ∆V for return of less than ~200 m/s. Implementation of the observation campaign could enable the discovery of a few thousand small asteroids per year and the characterization of a fraction of these resulting in a likelihood of finding about five good targets per year that meet the criteria for return.

Notional NEA Human Mission Concept of Operations with Pre-deploy. (Sources: Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, KISS)

Proof-of-concept trajectory analysis based on asteroid 2008 HU4 (which is approximately the right size, but of an unknown spectral type) suggest that a robotic spacecraft with a 40-kW solar electric propulsion system could return this asteroid to a high-lunar orbit in a total flight time of 6 to 10 years assuming the asteroid has a mass in the range of 250,000 to 1,000,000 kg (with the shorter flight times corresponding to the lower asteroid mass). Significantly, these proof-of-concept trajectories baseline a single Atlas V-class launch to low-Earth orbit.

The study also considered an alternative concept in which the spacecraft picks up a ~7-m diameter rock from the surface of a much larger asteroid (> 100-m diameter). The advantage of this approach is that asteroids 100-m in diameter or greater are much easier to discover and characterize. This advantage is somewhat offset by the added complexity of trying to pick up a large 7-m diameter rock from the surface, and the fact that there are far fewer 100-m class NEAs than smaller ones making it more difficult to find ones with the desired orbital characteristics. This mission approach would seek to return approximately the same mass of asteroid material – of order 500,000 kg – as the approach that returns an entire small NEA.

Conceptual Human NEA Mission Excursion Vehicle Using SEP System (Image Credit/Source: NASA / AMA, Inc.)

The proposed Asteroid Capture and Return mission would impact an impressive range of NASA interests including: the establishment of an accessible, high-value target in cislunar space; near-term operational experience with astronaut crews in the vicinity of an asteroid; a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft return resources for human exploitation and use in space; the potential to jump-start an entire industry based on in situ resource utilization; expansion of international cooperation in space; and planetary defense. It has the potential for cost effectively providing sufficient radiation shielding to protect astronauts from galactic cosmic rays and to provide the propellant necessary to transport the resulting shielded habitats. It would endow NASA and its partners with a new capability in deep space that hasn’t been seen since Apollo. Ever since the completion of the cold-war-based Apollo program there has been no over-arching geo-political rationale for the nation’s space ventures. Retrieving an asteroid for human exploration and exploitation would provide a new rationale for global achievement and inspiration. For the first time humanity would begin modification of the heavens for its benefit.

MEDIA ALERT

Join visionary Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.; leading commercial space entrepreneur Eric Anderson; former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki; and planetary scientist & veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, Ph.D. on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:30 a.m. PDT in Seattle, or via webcast, as they unveil a new space venture with a mission to help ensure humanity’s prosperity.

Supported by an impressive investor and advisor group, including Google’s Larry Page & Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.; film maker & explorer James Cameron; Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect Charles Simonyi, Ph.D.; Founder of Sherpalo and Google Board of Directors founding member K. Ram Shriram; and Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group Ross Perot, Jr., the company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.

The news conference will be held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:30 a.m. PDT and available online via webcast.

WHEN:

Tuesday, April 24
10:30 a.m. PDT

WHO:

• Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., Space Tourist, Planetary Resources, Inc. Investor
• Eric Anderson, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
• Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
• Chris Lewicki, President & Chief Engineer, Planetary Resources, Inc.
• Tom Jones, Ph.D., Planetary Scientist, Veteran NASA Astronaut & Planetary Resources, Inc. Advisor

WHERE:

Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at The Museum of Flight
9404 East Marginal Way South
Seattle, WA 98108

EDITOR’S UPDATE: Just to clarify something that wasn’t clear in the original post. I’m guessing this is an extraterrestrial mining firm based on the name of the company and the description in the media alert:

The company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.

If it’s not mining, I don’t know what else would fit that description. I really don’t think it’s solar power satellites, although you can manufacture them out of extraterrestrial resources. Diamandis has hinted in the past that he’s looking at asteroid mining. And Lewicki’s involvement certainly points to something related to surface operations on other worlds.

We’ll see next week. Should be an exciting announcement.

A 23rd century Star Fleet tricorder. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

X PRIZE PR — Las Vegas, NV — The X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm Foundation today announced the launch of the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE, a global competition to revolutionize healthcare. In this competition, teams will leverage technology innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence and wireless sensing – much like the medical Tricorder of Star Trek® fame – to make medical diagnoses independent of a physician or healthcare provider. The goal of the competition is to drive development of devices that will give consumers access to their state of health in the palm of their hand.

The announcement was made at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) during Qualcomm Incorporated Chairman and CEO and Qualcomm Foundation Chair, Dr. Paul Jacobs’ keynote address. Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, joined Dr. Jacobs on stage to introduce the competition.

“There is a dire need to improve access to healthcare globally and provide consumers with an opportunity to be active participants in their own health,” said Dr. Diamandis. “The Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE will incent the creation of technologies that can empower the consumer with the ability to decide when, where and how to seek health information and care.”

The $10 million top prize will be awarded to the team that develops a mobile platform that most accurately diagnoses a set of 15 diseases across 30 consumers in three days. Teams must also deliver this information in a way that provides a compelling consumer experience while capturing real time, critical health metrics such as blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature. The winning solutions will enable consumers in any location to quickly and effectively assess health conditions, determine if they need professional help and answer the question, “What do I do next?” when it comes to their health.

“Health care today certainly falls far short of the vision portrayed in Star Trek. By sponsoring the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE competition, the Qualcomm Foundation will stimulate the imaginations of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and doctors to create wireless health services and technologies that improve lives, increase consumer access to healthcare and drive efficiencies in the healthcare system,” said Dr. Jacobs. “This competition will accelerate the development of tools that can empower consumers to take charge of their own bodies and manage their own care.”

By launching this incentivized competition, the X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm Foundation
seek to make 23rd century science fiction a 21st century medical reality. The Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE looks to empower consumers to take control of their own healthcare and improve the quality of life for people, everywhere.

The X PRIZE Foundation will have a presence in Booth #30313, Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) South Hall 3, Upper Level and Booth #3231, LVCC North Hall. For more information about the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE, visit: http://www.qualcommtricorderxprize.org.

ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION

Founded in 1995, the X PRIZE Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization solving the world’s Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prize competitions that stimulate investment in research and development worth far more than the prize itself. The organization motivates and inspires brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual and financial capital for the benefit of humanity. The X PRIZE Foundation conducts competitions in four Prize Groups: Education & Global Development; Energy & Environment; Life Sciences; and Exploration. Prizes won include the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private, suborbital space flight; the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE for creating safe, affordable, production-capable vehicles that exceed 100 MPG energy equivalent (MPGe); the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X CHALLENGE for advanced rocket development; and the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE for highly effective ocean oil spill cleanup methods. Active prizes include the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco.
ABOUT THE QUALCOMM FOUNDATION

Established in 2010 by Qualcomm Incorporated, the Qualcomm Foundation is dedicated to developing and strengthening communities worldwide. Specifically, the Qualcomm Foundation focuses its philanthropic efforts on helping create and sustain educated, healthy, culturally vibrant communities in regions around the globe. For more information about the Qualcomm Foundation and Qualcomm Incorporated’s global social responsibility programs, visit www.qualcomm.com/community.

I am excited to announce that Singularity University founders Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil have BOTH been nominated for The Economist’s “Greatest Innovator of the Past Decade” distinction (in different categories).  As part of the theme “A Decade of Celebrating World-Changing Innovation,” The Economist is showcasing notable individuals within the seven categories and asking people to vote for their favorites.

Recipients of this honor include Bill and Melinda Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, J. Craig Venter, Ratan Tata, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page.

To vote for Ray and Peter, click on the following link:

http://www.economistconferences.co.uk/anniversaryaward/castyourvote

Vote now and tell your friends!

James Cameron. Credit: Richard Burdett

Cameron joins a world-class Board of Trustees that includes a growing list of entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers such as Dean Kamen, inventor, CEO, DEKA; Dr. J. Craig Venter, CEO, Synthetic Genomics; Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla and CEO, SpaceX; Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author; Anousheh Ansari, first female private space explorer; Larry Page, CEO & co-founder, Google; and Arianna Huffington, President and Editor in Chief, Huffington Post Media Group. The Board actively participates by advising on where large incentive competitions (X PRIZEs and X CHALLENGEs) can drive radical breakthroughs to help address humanity’s grand challenges.

Cameron is a film director, producer, screenwriter, explorer and inventor. His award-winning writing and directing work includes Avatar, Titanic, Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss. Cameron spent years creating documentary films and co-developing the digital 3-D Fusion Camera System. Described as part-scientist and part-artist, Cameron has also contributed to the state of the art of underwater cinematography, NASA Mars missions and remotely piloted vehicle technologies. In addition to his Board of Trustees appointment, Cameron serves on the X PRIZE Foundation’s Exploration Advisory Committee.

“Capturing the public’s imagination is a key component of all critical exploration these days. We especially have to engage kids and the X PRIZE Foundation certainly does it,” said Cameron. “They really promote innovation and exploration in key areas and I’m honored to participate in the development of its initiatives.”

“I am excited to have James Cameron joining our board,” noted Peter Diamandis, Chairman & CEO, X PRIZE Foundation. “He’s committed to envisioning and creating the future and does not take ‘impossible’ as an answer to solving the world’s grand challenges.”

James Cameron will be honored, along with philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, on April 16 at an event hosted at the FOX Studios Lot (Los Angeles) by Fox Chairman and X PRIZE Foundation Trustee, Jim Gianopulos. To reserve tickets and inquire about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Meghan Murphy at Meghan@xprize.org.

For more information about the X PRIZE Foundation, visit www.xprize.org.

X PRIZE UPDATE

Today, the X PRIZE Foundation announced the official roster of 29 registered teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, an unprecedented competition to send a robot to the Moon that travels at least 500 meters and transmits video, images, and data back to the Earth.

This group of teams signifies this new era of exploration’s diverse and participatory nature as it includes a huge variety of groups ranging from non-profits to university consortia to billion dollar businesses representing 17 nations on four continents. The global competition, the largest in history, was announced in September 2007, with a winner projected by 2015.

Today’s announcement reveals seven teams that had not been previously announced:

• Mystical Moon of the USA, targeting a global youth audience as active participants in designing their mission;

• Space Il of Israel, aimed to promote scientific awareness among Israeli youth as well as develop the nation’s space industry; Puli of Hungary, composed of young Hungarian professionals and space enthusiasts;

• SpaceMETA of Brazil, a group with experience in creating start-ups in fields like wireless and power line communications and design thinking processes;

• Plan B of Canada, utilizing existing technologies in software, microprocessors, communication, guidance, and robotic systems for their technology;

• Penn State Lunar Lions of the USA, a combination of students and faculty and engineers from the Applied Research Laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University;

• Angelicum Chile of Chile, a mix of students, professionals, and entrepreneurs with engineering backgrounds; Indus of India, led by a serial entrepreneur with more than ten years of experience in developing new businesses; and

• Phoenicia of the USA, a former Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X CHALLENGE competitor who has worked for a variety of small groups and companies interested in building small launch vehicles.

“The official private race to the Moon is on. What I find amazing is that when we first announced this competition, we thought there might be a dozen groups talented and bold enough to compete,” said Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “Instead, we have nearly 30 teams of heroic innovators showing us a new way to the Moon.”

The announcement of the official roster of registered teams comes at a time when this new era of lunar exploration has received great recognition and credibility. Recently, NASA, the U.S. civil space agency, announced that it will purchase data related to innovative lunar missions from six Google Lunar X PRIZE teams, with contracts worth as much as $10 million each. These purchases demonstrate how public and private space exploration alike will play an important role in making missions to the Moon financially sustainable.

“Teams have purchased launch vehicles, they are well into their design process, and we have even seen NASA recognize the value of this competition by purchasing data from several competitors,” continued Diamandis. “I want to congratulate the teams that have registered. We are excited to see what they will accomplish in the coming years.”

“From the Wright brothers’ first flight to the Lewis and Clark expedition, the most successful and revolutionary discoveries often come from small, entrepreneurial teams,” said Tiffany V.C. Montague, Manager of Google Space Initiatives. “At Google, we share with this global group of innovators a passion for tackling tough technological and scientific challenges, and we wish them the best of luck as they begin the mission phase.”

Since the competition was first announced, the roster of teams has steadily grown. All of the competing teams have accepted and signed the binding set of rules for the competition.

To learn more about the registered teams, competition details, and other information, visit www.googlelunarxprize.org.

ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE

The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented competition to challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. To win the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a privately-funded team must successfully place a robot on the Moon’s surface that explores at least 500 meters (1/3 of a mile) and transmits high definition video and images back to Earth. The first team to do so will claim a $20 million Grand Prize, while the second team will earn a $5 million Prize. Teams are also eligible to win a $1 million award for stimulating diversity in the field of space exploration and as much as $4 million in bonus prizes for accomplishing additional technical tasks such as moving ten times as far, surviving the frigid lunar night, or visiting the site of a previous lunar mission. To date, more than 20 teams from a dozen countries around the world have registered to compete for the prize. The Google Lunar X PRIZE is available to be claimed until the end of the year 2015. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, visit http://www.googlelunarxprize.org.

ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION

Founded in 1995, the X PRIZE Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization solving the world’s Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prize competitions that stimulate investment in research and development worth far more than the prize itself. The organization motivates and inspires brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual and financial capital for the benefit of humanity. The X PRIZE Foundation conducts competitions in four Prize Groups: Education & Global Development; Energy & Environment; Life Sciences; and Exploration (Ocean and Deep Space). Prizes won include the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private, suborbital space flight; the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE for creating safe, affordable, production-capable vehicles that exceed 100 MPG energy equivalent (MPGe); and the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X CHALLENGE for advanced rocket development. Active prizes include the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, the $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE, and the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. For more information, visit www.xprize.org.

Congratulations to X PRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis, who has been awarded The Economist’s No Boundaries award as part of the weekly magazine’s 2010 Innovation Awards. Recipients were honored last week in London.

THE ECONOMIST PRESS RELEASE

Peter H. Diamandis, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and aerospace expert who is founder and chief executive of the X Prize Foundation, is awarded the ‘No Boundaries’ Economist Innovation Award today. Mr Diamandis has spurred innovation by offering prizes to encourage and inspire achievement by innovators in the aerospace, genomics and automotive industries since 2004.

Commenting on Diamandis’ award win, Tom Standage, Digital Editor at The Economist, said: “The idea of offering prizes to encourage innovation is not a new one — it dates back at least as far as the British government’s Longitude Prize of 1714. But Mr Diamandis has brought it back into fashion in the modern era, inspiring both innovators in a range of fields and also prompting other organisations to offer similar prizes. This is a beautiful example of “meta-innovation” — driving innovation in the way people innovate. A relatively small prize pot of a few million dollars can trigger much larger investments as several teams compete to win the prize. And the competition and co-operation between those teams further accelerates the innovation process. This model has already had its most striking success in the form of the $10m Ansari X Prize, awarded in 2004 to the creators of the first privately funded reusable spacecraft, which helped catalyse the emergence of a new private space industry. We applaud Mr Diamandis as he works to help advance other fields, from energy-efficient cars to genome analysis, with further prizes.”

Since the success of the Ansari X Prize, Mr Diamandis has gone on to offer the $10m Archon Genomics X Prize for the first team to fully sequence 100 human genomes in ten days, the US$30m Google Lunar Prize for sending a robot the Moon and the $10m Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize for creating a mass-market automobile prototype that achieves greater than 100 MPGe (miles per gallon-equivalent). The goal is to encourage the creation of viable, affordable and super fuel-efficient vehicles that people want to own.

Morten Lundal, Group Chief Commercial Officer of Vodafone, sponsor of this year’s No Boundaries Award, said: “True innovation goes beyond the usual constraints of industry or sector and creates new opportunities for all to benefit.  The X Prize Foundation is inspirational and its achievements deserve to be celebrated.”

Mr Diamandis is about to announce additional X Prizes that focus on accelerating the rate of positive change over the next five years. The prizes are expected to be worth a total of $100m, and include Energy & Environment, Life Sciences, Exploration (both sea and space) Education and Global Development.

The Economist Innovation Awards programme 2010 culminates with an awards ceremony on Thursday October 21st at the Science Museum, London where Mr Diamandis, alongside this year’s other category winners, will be recognised for their achievements and the result of the inaugural Readers’ Award winner for 2010 will be announced.

Avatar Director/Producer James Cameron floats weightless in Zero G along with X PRIZE Trustees in a flight to raise funds for the X PRIZE Foundation. Left to right: Rob McEwen (Chairman, US Gold), James Cameron, Peter H. Diamandis (Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE), Elon Musk (Chairman/CEO, SpaceX), Jim Gianopulos (Chairman/CEO, Fox Filmed Entertainment). Photo credit: Steve Boxall

James Cameron and Friends Soar Weightless in the Avatar Zero-G Experience to Support The X PRIZE Foundation
X PRIZE Foundation Press Release

This special flight assembled a group of 30 individuals who are passionate about the science and technology represented in AVATAR and mission and innovation of the X PRIZE Foundation. Three spots were reserved for the winners of an eBay auction, in which the general public went head-to-head in a bidding war to snag a coveted seat aboard the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. An additional 20 seats were sold for $15,000 each. The weightless experience took place aboard G-FORCE ONE, a specially modified, FAA-approved, Boeing 727-200 aircraft which departed from Van Nuys Airport. The flight, identical to those used by NASA to train its astronauts, provided guests the chance to fly like Superman and flip like an Olympic gymnast, as ZERO-G creates Martian (1/3-gravity), Lunar (1/6-gravity) and zero gravity conditions over the course of 15 parabolic arcs.

“Entrepreneurs and innovators are creating technologies which are making spaceflight affordable…whether it is flying aboard a Zero-G flight, a sub-orbital flight into space, or a private flight to orbit. On Saturday’s weightless flight we gathered six X PRIZE Trustees and 20 philanthropists who believe we can use incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for humanity,” said Dr. Diamandis, who founded both the X PRIZE Foundation and Zero-G. “The funds raised during this flight will help us design and launch audacious future X PRIZEs which will help humanity expand beyond the bounds of Earth.”

The auction raised a total of $210,000 with all proceeds benefiting the X PRIZE Foundation – an educational, non-profit organization that spurs innovation and radical breakthroughs through incentivized competition. The Foundation focuses on four different areas: Life Sciences; Energy and the Environment; Education and Global Development; and Exploration (Space and Oceans). Last month, the Foundation awarded the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, a competition designed to inspire a new generation of viable, safe and super fuel-efficient vehicles capable of achieving 100 miles per gallon or the energy equivalent (MPGe).

“The rapid acceleration of technology is enabling small teams to conduct exploration that was only possible by national governments. The X PRIZE Foundation helps to set and incentivize audacious and worthy targets,” noted Cameron, Advisor on the X PRIZE Foundation’s Exploration Prize Committee. If AVATAR has created heightened interest on the importance of caring for our environment, science exploration and the potential for groundbreaking innovation then we have succeeded. These goals are in line with the mission of the X PRIZE Foundation.”