Deep Space Industries will send ‘FireFly’ ships to prospect for mineable asteroids in 2015

Who would have thought that within a year, we’d have multiple, competing asteroid mining startups? Deep Space Industries, which will hold its official launch on Tuesday at Santa Monica’s Museum of Flying, is the latest of several ambitious private companies to announce plans for the final frontier: in its case, to prospect near-Earth asteroids with an eye towards using materials in them to build a permanent presence in space. In 2015, it says it will begin sending unmanned “FireFly” spacecraft to explore asteroids that fly near Earth, followed by heavier “DragonFly” craft that will bring back samples from likely candidates between 2016 and 2020.