Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson at Farnborough International Airshow (Image: Dave Stock) LauncherOne (Image: Virgin Galactic)

Billionaire-backed Planetary Resources, the company that in April announced ambitious plans to mine space rocks for minerals, will hitch a ride with space tourism company Virgin Galactic.

The new union is a sign that the nascent commercial space-flight industry could soon become self-sustaining. It was prompted by LauncherOne, a low-cost satellite-launching rocket that Virgin founder Richard Branson revealed on 11 July at the Farnborough International Airshow, UK.

Virgin Galactic, headquartered in Las Cruces, New Mexico, is best known for its plans to ferry paying tourists to the edge of space. The idea is to take the tourist-carrying SpaceShipTwo rocket to an altitude of 7 kilometres using aircraft WhiteKnightTwo. SpaceShipTwo will then be dropped so it can fire its engine and climb to an altitude of 100 kilometres – giving passengers a 5 minute spell in microgravity and an out-of-this-world view. An air launch means the rocket itself does not have to push through the densest part of the atmosphere, making the launch extremely fuel efficient.


The idea behind LauncherOne is to use the same process to launch satellites. From 2016, Virgin plans to sling LauncherOne beneath WhiteKnightTwo in place of SpaceShipTwo for satellite launches.

Satellite shake-up

Branson says small satellites with masses up to 225 kilograms will be able to reach orbit for about $10 million – “two to five times less” than a regular satellite launch costs.

The low cost is attractive to Planetary Resources, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, which announced its partnership with Virgin at the same air show. It plans to use LauncherOne to send up 10 satellites a year, each weighing about 50 kilograms. These will be capable of spotting asteroids of between 50 and 500 metres across that have a reflectivity suggesting they are potentially rich in minerals.

Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson says Virgin’s satellite launcher is more attractive than that of Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, which also offers air-launched rockets – but for satellites of up to about 1500 kilograms. “They are bigger rockets and cost ten times more than Virgin is planning,” Anderson says.

Because Planetary Resources plans to start launching its satellites in one-and-a-half to two years time, however, it may have to begin without Virgin, later switching. “If Virgin aren’t ready – we’ll launch anyway,” says Anderson.

Asteroid warning

The asteroid-hunting satellites are just a first step in Planetary Resources’ plan to mine asteroids. When the satellites find promising candidates, a second fleet of reconnaissance spacecraft will examine them at close quarters. Eventually, craft yet to be developed will then mine them. In the meantime, the asteroid-hunting satellites will be able to double up as an early warning system for potentially dangerous asteroids, says Anderson.

Alan Stern, a former head of NASA’s space science programme and chief scientist at lunar mining start-up Moon Express, based in Mountain View, California, is impressed by the way the commercial space firms are working together so soon: “This is a sign of a maturing commercial space economy, with business to business deals now proliferating. It is highly promising.”

Planetary Resources aren’t the only ones to have paid Virgin deposits for launches on LauncherOne. So have environmental monitoring start-up GeoOptics of Pasadena, California and satellite imaging firm SkyBox of Mountain View. What’s more, Surrey Satellite Technology in Guildford, UK, plans to customise microsatellites called CubeSats for cheap launches in the Virgin system, according to founder Martin Sweeting.