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Planetary Resources is still years away from actually snatching up an asteroid and staking a cosmic claim

What the study did was show that, for the first time in history, this was now feasible using technology available in this decade

it appears feasible to identify, capture and return close to Earth an entire asteroid that is roughly 23 feet (7 meters) wide. This so-called near-Earth asteroid (NEA) would weigh in the neighborhood of 500 tons

According to the study

Placing a 500-ton asteroid in high lunar orbit would provide a unique, meaningful and affordable destination for astronaut crews in the next decade

This disruptive capability would have a positive impact on a wide range of the nation’s human space exploration interests. It would provide a high-value target in cislunar space that would require a human presence to take full advantage of this new resource.

Such a venture represents a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft retrieve significant quantities of valuable resources for exploitation by astronaut crews to enable human exploration farther out into the solar system.

Water or other material extracted from a captured volatile-rich near-Earth asteroid could be used to provide affordable spacecraft shielding against galactic cosmic rays. The extracted water could also be used for propellant to transport a shielded habitat.

This undertaking could jump-start an entire in situ resource utilization industry. The availability of a multi-hundred-ton asteroid in lunar orbit could also stimulate the expansion of international cooperation in space as agencies come together to determine how to sample and process raw material from an asteroid.

may someday have to deflect a much larger near-Earth object

the idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over 100 years.

the feasibility of this retrieval concept is made possible by three key developments.

Firstly, the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for mining.

Secondly, there is evolving ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured asteroid.

Lastly, the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s both enables exploration and exploitation of the returned near-Earth asteroid.

NASA's findings are put in the public domain, as in the earlier cases of communication, weather and navigation satellites, for use by competing commercial enterprises

companies can then work to generate revenues — and pay taxes — while lowering the cost of access to resources for the good of all

V class asteroids: They are a far-out group of asteroids that follow a path between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, and are made of igneous, eruptive materials.

Asteroid composition has been classified in the following way:

among its investors Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who are worth $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion

company's advisers include filmmaker and adventurer James Cameron, former NASA astronaut Tom Jones and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager

Water can be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel

platinum-group metals it plans to extract will help lower the cost of many products here on Earth, including hand-held electronic devices and monitors for televisions and computers.

were one spacecraft to fail the entire mission wouldn’t be compromised

robots would be deployed from a “mother” spacecraft and spring into action upon landing, tumbling

hybrid rovers could also help prepare for future, more in-depth exploration.

exploration of small bodies would help unravel the origin of the solar system and its early evolution

evaluate the resource potential of small bodies in view of future human missions beyond Earth.”