A Scottish company unveils plans for an asteroid mining mission

A Scottish aerospace company has unveiled plans to launch the first asteroid mining mission in the UK.

Asteroid Mining Corporation (AMC) seeks £ 2.3 million to build a satellite capable of identifying platinum-group metal deposits on asteroids

It hopes to launch the first satellite for prospecting Asteroids (APS1) in 2020.

APS1 will be used to perform a spectral sweep of asteroids to determine if they are "viable candidates" for mining.

founded in 2016 by entrepreneur Mitch Hunter-Scullion, launched a crowdfunding campaign to help finance the project

Hunter-Scullion's company calculated that a single 25m diameter metal asteroid contains approximately 29 tonnes of platinum worth approximately £ 725m.

He said, "Our goal is to develop a revolutionary technology that will eventually allow the extraction, processing, and use of materials derived from the millions of asteroids known to exist near the Earth

"The APS1 will be our first step to achieve this success.

"The APS1 will be a Spectroscopy Spatial Telescope that will collect data on target asteroids and will serve as a test for some of our technologies that we will extend later for actual operational missions."

million. Hunter-Scullion founded AMC after completing an essay on the extraction of asteroids at the University of Liverpool Hope.

He said: "In seeking for this, I realized that there were few companies that had been created with the intention of extracting an asteroid, none being in the UK. "

"It was a subject that fascinated me and when I finished university I decided to create AMC and start working on the development of technology that will open the possibilities of an above-ground commercial market. "