Analysts at Deep Space Industries estimated an asteroid that passed within just 27 thousand kilometres of the Earth on February 15 at $195 billion.
The experts said that the water (5% of the asteroid weight) that could be processed in rocket fuel might be worth $65 billion.
In addition, as the asteroid allegedly contains about 10% iron, nickel etc., the total worth of space construction material will be about $130 billion.
It should be noted that those are just rough calculations excluding transportation of the resources to our planet.
Be it as it may, Deep Space Industries is set to start space exploration with an aim to harvest the space resources in 2015. In order to carry out mining operations in outer space, the company will launch very small unmanned FireFly ships which will explore asteroids to see if it is possible to mine them. In 2016, Deep Space Industries will send into outer space DragonFly spacecraft to bring up to 45 kilograms of asteroid samples to the Earth.
Although the plans of Deep Space Industries look really ambitious, it is still unclear how exactly the samples will be returned down to the Earth.
