Google Top managers will invest in a space exploration project

The project on space exploration and the Earth natural resources research Planetary Resources will receive support from the Google CEO Larry Page, Board of Directors Chairman Eric Schmidt, with the participation of director James Cameron and other investors. All details will be announced at a Museum of Flight press conference in Seattle, which will be held on Tuesday, April 24.

The Planetary Resource message also contains an invitation to this event, during which visitors will have a chance to learn about the company's mission and how it plans to make a revolution in space exploration and to support the prosperity of mankind for next generations.

According to the project developers, their plan will increase world GDP by trillions of dollars. One of the Planetary Resources spheres is exploring the possibility of natural resources extraction from the asteroids, as RIA Novosti reported referring to The Wall Street Journal.

The idea for implementation of which a number of prominent investors are going to donate quite a sum of money, is to send unmanned spacecrafts to the asteroids, where they are to extract minerals and water from the rock, which could be used to further exploration of outer space or on the return flight to the earth. John Lewis, University of Arizona professor (who, according to him, works as a startup consultant), states that Planetary Resources already has a small private company under its control that can build such spacecrafts.

Planetary Resources project co-founders are the former head of NASA's Mars mission Eric Anderson and the entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, whose business interests are centered on the commercial exploration of space. The project investors include: a former Microsoft top manager Charles Simonyi, and one of the Google directors K. Ram Shriram. Total investment in the project is not specified.

It is not the first time Google leaders support projects related to optimization and future use of natural resources. The company previously invested a number of wind and solar energy projects, aiming to use renewable energy sources.