Based in Bellevue, Wash., the company employs about 25 engineers and has development contracts for technologies like laser communications that it believes it will need for prospecting and mining missions.
Planetary Resources already has the luxury of being revenue positive, according to Golubovich, thanks to the company's contracts for technologies that are complementary to its grand mission, the Russian investor says.
With the political currents seeming to flow against Americans and Europeans, and Rosneft suggesting it may pair up with the China National Petroleum Corporation as a strategic partner, some analysts say the prize contracts for these technology investments may fall to service companies like Halliburton, Schlumberger or Baker Hughes rather than a large oil company.
In the past, government contracts for unproved technologies that were poorly defined have frequently been saddled with problems and led to big cost overruns.
The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) has awarded animation firm Jelly a contract for CGI technology.
The department found that 27 private interrogators, employees of CACI, a Virginia company, had been improperly hired under a contract for "information technology workers".
New York bank JP Morgan Chase Monday said it signed a seven-year contract for information technology services with IBM, in a deal worth more than $5 billion.
A federal administrative judge issued a sweeping order Monday prohibiting members of the public or the news media from seeing any part of a hearing concerning the Homeland Security Department's cancellation of a contract for a technology aimed at reliably detecting bioterrorist attacks.
This could help to avoid a repeat of Iran's experiences after its 1979 revolution, when contracts for fuel and technology for its planned nuclear power program were not honoured.
The settlement is one of several setbacks in this country for Infosys, and could also affect other big Indian outsourcing companies that rely on the temporary H-1B employment visas to bring thousands of workers from India each year for technology contracts here.
