Asteroid contains nearly $ 200,000 million in gold and water

Potential impact of an asteroid like 2012 DA14 with Earth causes fear these celestial bodies, but the resources inside the home become a "gold mine" worth billions of dollars.

This estimate is the American company that makes Deep Space Industries (DSI) has calculated that the asteroid "rub" our planet this Friday contains $ 65.000 million in water and recovered $ 130.000 billion in metals.

These figures could awaken a "new gold rush" in the not too distant future, he said in an interview with Efe, Stephen Covey, director of research and development and founder of DSI.

Covey said that "space is so vast that there for everyone," but those asteroids that are at a reasonable distance from the Earth will be wanting to stakeholders.

The adventure will not be easy and the high cost, but the chances of these giant rocks, composed of water and metals such as iron, gold and platinum, leading some to believe that the effort is worth it.

These heavenly bodies considered the debris left after the formation of the solar system house "all that our civilization needs to expand into the space and to provide our needs here and increase the wealth of our economy," said Covey.

DSI believed to reach the "playing field" even before it has started really can help "set the rules and make us-and our investors-win."

Asteroid 2012 DA14 will go 27,700 miles from the Earth's surface, a record close in astronomical terms.

However, the asteroid is not a good target because its orbit is tilted relative to the Earth, so much energy is required to "hunt".

The company intends to exploit these asteroids in dragging them into the low earth orbit space, because in a time when NASA aims to bring longer manned, would be like an "oasis" for refueling.

Your goal is to turn the asteroid material in metal components and water collected in the form of ice use it for rocket fuel. All this within a decade.

Covey said the shipment of fuel, water and materials as has been done to assemble the International Space Station (ISS) has a cost of at least $ 10 million per tonne, even using the new low-cost vehicles.

Also, bear in Space "service stations" can serve to extend the life of hundreds of communication satellites that orbit stop when they run out of fuel and are destroyed, creating space junk.

The company, which plans to have its own fleet of space vehicles, already have in your schedule their first mission, in 2015, to make a reconnaissance trip to an asteroid.

First they launched a small satellite explorers on a one way mission, with a duration of between two and six months for possible candidates and study its composition more closely.

The idea is to use technology to research microsatellites ("CubeSats") using electronic components and do not weigh more than a kilo.

Expect to have to fund this mission with investors and clients as the American space agency (NASA) and sponsoring companies.

In 2016 expect to make the first mission with an unmanned spacecraft that could take two to three years to collect samples and bring them back to analyze its composition.

The company, which plans to have at first ships of private space companies, is also designing their own models to create a reusable vehicle that allows bringing into orbit small fragments of asteroids.

The vehicle displayed a kind of metallic tentacle cables deployed to surround the meteorite and drag as if carrying a large bag.

In the not too distant future, some 20 years, Covey predicts that there will be human settlements in different parts of the solar system that make use of large communications platforms and solar power stations.

Currently there are two American companies -DSI and Planetary Resources (in which Google co-founder Larry Page participate) - interested in exploiting these resources.

It remains to be seen whether it is fiction or science projects have mining as a new destination space.

Professor of Planetary Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Richard Binzel, agrees that eventually asteroids can be exploited to obtain resources and become points "step transaction" for manned missions to planets as Mars.

However, speaking to The Wall Street Journal, found that DSI effort to approach Earth asteroids "may be decades ahead of his time," and being a little too optimistic. Binzel insisted, however, that "at some point you have to start."