Posted: Sat, May 1, 2021, 8:42 AM ET (1242 GMT)
A Chinese launch Tuesday included, as one of its payloads, a technology demonstration satellite for asteroid mining. A Long March 6 rocket launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 11:20 pm EDT Monday (0320 GMT Tuesday) carrying nine satellites on a commercial rideshare mission. The largest satellites were three imaging satellites, the Qilu-1 radar satellite and Qilu-4 and Foshan-1 optical satellites. Among the secondary payloads was NEO-1, developed by Shanghai ASES Spaceflight Technology Co. Ltd. for Shenzhen-based Origin Space. The spacecraft will test near Earth asteroid observation and prototype technology verification for space resource acquisition in low Earth orbit. The mission will carry out an active debris removal test using a net.
