For the first time in the

history of space exploration, a private company is offering the scientific community, governments and companies a ride aboard a spacecraft for their experiments or instruments at insured, published, fixed prices.

SpaceDev, (www.SpaceDev.Com) the world's first commercial space

exploration company, intends to launch the first private spacecraft to

land on a near earth asteroid for the purpose of collecting scientific

data and to stake a claim to establish private property rights in space.

The spacecraft, Near Earth Asteroid Prospector (NEAP), first in a series

of SpaceDev Space Prospectors, will carry three of its own instruments to

analyze its asteroids size, and determine its composition and value. In

addition to these, space is available for up to seven additional

experiments or instruments of which four are canisters for instruments or

experiments to be deployed into sun orbit during the mission or to the

surface of the SpaceDev asteroid. On the first mission, one canister will

contain the NEAP alpha proton X-ray spectrometer which will be used to

determine the elemental composition of the asteroid surface, leaving three

canisters available to carry customer experiments or nano-rovers.

"Until today, scientists, universities, companies and governments have had

one avenue to space-the government. NEAP is the new spacecraft on the

launchpad, and its science costs only one-fourth what a recent government

mission costs," said James W. Benson, Chairman, SpaceDev.

"This unique opportunity to use a private spacecraft offers these

customers inexpensive access to space on short notice and also offers

quick turn around on experiment results-results in approximately half the

time of current missions. Furthermore, the mission represents minimal risk

to the customer, because customer's instruments are fully insured against

launch failure," said Benson.

NEAP intends to launch between mid 1999 and mid 2000, with flight time

estimated at between nine and fifteen months. Potential target asteroids

include 1993 BX3 and 1996 FO3.

Construction and testing of NEAP will begin during the first quarter of

1998 and will take approximately 18 months to complete. SpaceDev is a

public company (OTC:PSDM) specializing in private space missions and

consulting.

Full details of the Announcement of Opportunity are available on the