First-ever ‘asteroid mining robot’

admin October 1, 2020 Daily Current Affairs

A private Beijing company, Origin Space, will send out the world’s first mining robot — termed as an ‘asteroid mining robot’ — into space by November 2020.
The robot will, however, not do any actual mining.
The mission will be a preliminary assessment of the asteroid mining robot’s capabilities of identifying and extracting valuable resources, aimed at the eventual mining of asteroids.
The 30-gram spacecraft, NEO-1, is likely to be launched as a secondary payload on a Chinese Long March rocket, which will enter at an orbit around the earth at 500-kilometre altitude.
The goal is to verify and demonstrate multiple functions such as spacecraft orbital manoeuvre, simulated small celestial body capture, intelligent spacecraft identification and control.
The Chinese company has another mission ‘Yuanwang-1’, nicknamed ‘Little Hubble’, which is slated to be launched by late 2021 or early 2022.

SRC : INDIA TODAY