Lifeboat Foundation

It’s a scouting mission. I wonder how much this will cost since this is not a sample return.

Asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries (DSI) has announced the first commercial mission to a near-Earth asteroid, with launch planned by the end of the decade.

Deep Space Industries has announced its plans to fly the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission. A spacecraft known as “Prospector-1” will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, investigate the object and determine its value as a source of space resources. This mission will be an important step in the company’s longer term plans to harvest and supply in-space resources to support the growing space economy.