It is said that the long-awaited asteroid mining industry could potentially generate trillions of dollars back into the economy. Even more importantly, our ability to extract resources from these space rocks is absolutely vital to our space exploration ambitions. Without it, we're stuck on this planet - for better or worse.

Thankfully, great news was delivered a couple of days ago by asteroid-mining company Planetary Resources, announcing the successful launch of their Arkyd 6, a 6U CubeSat, into polar orbit!