When your spacecraft is way out there racing along millions of miles from Earth and checking an asteroid for rich metals, one thing becomes hyper-critical: radio communication with the pioneering mission.
That’s why the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) approval of a radio license for Seal Beach-based asteroid-mining company AstroForge is so important for the company’s upcoming Odin mission.
“We have to communicate with it. We have to send the images back. If we can’t send the images back, what’s the point? There’s no mission,” AstroForge co-founder and Chief Executive Matt Gialich told the Business Journal on Oct. 30.
He said it’s the first time a purely commercial company has been awarded a deep-space license, making it a historical step in the growing field of space exploration. Previously, such licenses had only been granted to companies such as Boeing Co. that were working on a government contract, according to Gialich.
“With the FCC’s authorization, we are now full steam ahead in final preparations for our second mission,” according to the 2-year-old company.
The whole process for getting the FCC authorization, called “experimental licensing,” took about six months to obtain.
FCC’s ‘Really Good Faith’
“There was a lot work we had to do, but I think it was all reasonable work, and the FCC worked in really good faith with us to get this done,” Gialich said.
The FCC license gives AstroForge both approval for its upcoming Odin mission and the green light to establish communication networks with their ground partners, the company says.
That will enable near real-time data transmission and operational oversight of its spacecraft in deep space.
The Odin mission, which has been set back by delays typical to the rocket industry, is currently set for early next year.
Gialich is not naming the asteroid, but the exploration will be a giant leap forward in mining precious metals, such as platinum, as well as other valuable metals and minerals from asteroids and transporting the precious cargo back to Earth.
The platinum metals are used in products ranging from jewelry to catalytic converters in cars, to electronics and cancer-fighting drugs.
Seal Beach, $55M in Financing
The company has about 36 employees, all working at the Seal Beach headquarters. It has raised $55 million in financing to date from investors like Nova Threshold, Alexis Ohanian’s 776, Initialized, Caladan, YC, Uncorrelated Ventures and Jed McCaleb.
McCaleb, whom Forbes estimated as having a worth of $2.4 billion, is best known for creating the Mt. Gox bitcoin.
At first the AstroForge project may have seemed far-fetched, though investors are betting it will work.
“Science fiction becomes reality at a rate I don’t think people understand,” Gialich said.
“Everybody thought (Elon Musk’s) SpaceX when it first started was a complete and utter joke and would never go anywhere.”
Odin’s mission is to go out and take images of the asteroid to quantify that it is a metallic asteroid, a special type of asteroid the company wants to go after.
That will be followed by Vestri, another spacecraft, expected around October of next year.
“Vestri will go back to that same asteroid. It will land on it, and it will confirm the concentration of platinum group metals on that asteroid,” the company says.
Seeks Success Where Others Failed
AstroForge intends to succeed where bigger companies have failed.
“A handful of companies—notably Larry Page – backed Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries—have attempted to conquer asteroid mining, and each invested (and lost) millions in the process,” according to TechCrunch.
Page is the co-founder of Google.
AstroForge’s new 64,000-square-foot facility houses asteroid mining and refining technology, spacecraft integration, internal manufacturing and testing systems.
The firm launched its first mission in April of last year. Called Brokkr, the mission demonstrated the company’s refinery technology operating in space and “identified key areas for improvement” before Odin’s takeoff next year. The last contact with the Brokkr mission occurred on May 16.
Odin will launch aboard Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 lunar mission.
