and form dust clouds. These might be confined by some dome or bubble barrier. Or else some means of rapidly dissipating any dust could be provided for. Mining operations require special equipment to handle the extraction and processing of ore in outer space. The machinery will need to be anchored to the body, but once in place, the ore can be moved about more readily due to the lack of gravity. However, no techniques for refining ore in zero gravity currently exist. Docking with an asteroid might be performed using a harpoon-like process, where a projectile would penetrate the surface to serve as an anchor; then an attached cable would be used to winch the vehicle to the surface, if the asteroid is both penetrable and rigid enough for a harpoon to be effective. Due to the distance from Earth to an asteroid selected for mining, the round-trip time for communications will be several minutes or more, except during occasional close approaches to Earth by near-Earth asteroids. Thus any mining equipment will either need to be highly automated, or a human presence will be needed nearby. Humans would also be useful for troubleshooting problems and for maintaining the equipment. On the other hand, multi-minute communications delays have not prevented the success of robotic exploration of Mars, and automated systems would be much less expensive to build and deploy. Failed mining projects On April 24, 2012, a plan was announced by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources. The company was called Planetary Resources and its founders include aerospace entrepreneurs Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis. Advisers included film director and explorer James Cameron and investors included Google's chief executive Larry Page. Its executive chairman was Eric Schmidt. They planned to create a fuel depot in space by 2020 by using water from asteroids, splitting it to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft. In 2020, the scheme was wound down and all hardware assets were auctioned off. Telescope technology was proposed by Planetary Resources to locate and harvest these asteroids has resulted in the plans for three different types of satellites: Arkyd Series 100 (the Leo Space telescope) is a less expensive instrument that will be used to find, analyze, and see what resources are available on nearby asteroids. Arkyd Series 200 (the Interceptor)