NEW YORK/SEATTLE - Billionaire investors in a small, Seattle-area company that aims to one day mine resources on asteroids have not been deterred by an unmanned rocket explosion that destroyed their test satellite, the company said.
Privately held Planetary Resources counts Google Inc chief executive and co-founder Larry Page and chairman Eric Schmidt among its backers, along with Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, Ross Perot Jr, former Microsoft Corp executive Charles Simonyi and John Whitehead, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.