Asteroid Mining Company in Bellevue Seeks Interns

, is taking applications now for internships.

The company, which plans to foray into space and explore near-earth asteroids with its Arkyd-100 spacecraft within two years, is looking for college juniors and seniors studying aerospace, mechanical, electrical or computer systems engineering; engineering physics; engineering mechanics or computer science, according to the company's application.

The job will be from January through August 2013, according to the application.

Planetary Resources involves ex-NASA and ex-Microsoft employees, as well as a star-studded slate of investors and advisers, including Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, filmmaker James Cameron and Microsoft's former Chief Software Architect Charles Simonyi, who has traveled to space as a tourist aboard Russian Soyuz crafts.

The company, founded by Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis, is banking that the future of space exploration depends on being able to gather resources in space. 

The company's first missions will use robots, though human miners are expected to be employed in the future, officials said, and the company's first prospecting Arkyd-100 spacecraft could launch within two years, said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer at a press conference earlier this year.

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Planetary Resources Internship Application