Following financial troubles caused by "delayed investment", it was announced on 31 October 2018, that the company's human assets were purchased by the blockchain software technology company ConsenSys, Inc.[4] In May 2020, ConsenSys made all Planetary Resources intellectual property available to the public domain, and in June 2020, all the remaining hardware assets were auctioned off.

[5] Although the long-term goal of the company was to mine asteroids, its initial plans called for developing a market for small (30–50 kg) cost-reduced space telescopes for Earth observation and astronomy.

These spacecraft would have employed a laser-optical system for ground communications,[6] reducing payload bulk and mass compared to conventional RF antennas.

The same telescope satellite capabilities that Planetary Resources hoped to sell to customers could have been used to survey and intensively examine near-Earth asteroids.

[9] Planetary Resources, Inc was founded as Arkyd Astronautics on 1 January 2009,[1] with Peter Diamandis as co-chairman and director, and Chris Lewicki as president and chief engineer.

[2] According to co-founder Eric C. Anderson, the name "Arkyd Astronautics" was deliberately ambiguous, to help keep the company's asteroid-mining agenda secret.

It was speculated that Planetary Resources was "looking for ways to extract raw materials from non-Earth sources," as how it would (as stated in the press release) "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.

"[12] From the outset, the dominant assumption was that the company intended to develop asteroid mining operations,[3][12][13][14] with one anonymous source reportedly verifying that claim in advance of the April 24 event.

[16][17][18] By January 2013, Planetary Resources had completed a ground test prototype of the Arkyd-100 and released a limited set of details publicly.

[7][27] The "Reflight" descriptor was used because Planetary's first satellite, Arkyd 3, was destroyed on October 28, 2014, after an Antares resupply rocket exploded seconds after launch.

[40] Later stages of the strategic plan envisioned sending survey probes to selected asteroids in order to map, including deep-scanning, and to conduct sample-and-analysis and/or sample-and-return missions.

[11] Ultimately, their intent was to establish fully automated/robotic asteroid-based mining and processing operations, and the capability to transport the resulting products wherever desired.

In addition to the extraction of industrial and precious metals for space-based and terrestrial use, the project envisioned producing water for an orbital propellant depot.

The first attempt to validate and mature the technology[44][45][46][47] met a setback on 28 October 2014, when the first Arkyd-3 test satellite was destroyed during launch in the explosion of the Antares rocket carrying it to the International Space Station (ISS).

[51] A second flight test unit for Planetary Resources — twice the size of A3R with a 6U form factor — was the Arkyd-6 (A6, also ARKYD 6A; COSPAR: 2018-004V; SATCAT: 43130).