Origin Space, a Beijing-based private, space resources company, is set to launch its first “space mining robot” in November. NEO-1 is a small (around 30 kilograms) satellite intended to enter a 500-km Sun-synchronous orbit. It will be launched by a Chinese Long March rocket as a secondary payload.
This small spacecraft will not be doing actual mining; instead, it will be testing technologies. “The goal is to verify and demonstrate multiple functions such as spacecraft orbital maneuver, simulated small celestial body capture, intelligent spacecraft identification and control,” says Yu Tianhong, an Origin Space co-founder, Andrew Jones reported yesterday for the IEEE Spectrum.
