AstroForge says it’s pressing forward with its goal of mining valuable metals from asteroids, despite a setback in its recent space mission.
The company’s Odin spacecraft was launched successfully on Feb. 26, but it soon encountered huge communication difficulties, possibly tumbling through deep space.
“I think we all know the hope is fading as we continue the mission,” AstroForge co-founder and CEO Matt Gialich said on March 1.
While putting on a brave face after Odin’s failure to scout its assigned asteroid, the company on March 6 acknowledged: “As the spacecraft travels further, we’ll have less and less certainty about where Odin is, and that will make communications and tracking more and more difficult.”
At the time of the update, the unmanned spacecraft was 270,000 miles away from Earth, having traveled beyond the moon and heading into “truly deep space territory.”
launched but quickly ran into trouble
The company said it would “maintain periodic attempts to re-establish contact” and hailed the knowledge already gained from the troubled flight.
“The chance of talking with Odin is minimal,” the company said.
Square-shaped and about the size of a small washing machine, Odin was scheduled to do a fly-by of the targeted asteroid, known as 2022 OB5, to check for metal content. Odin is said to be the first purely commercial spacecraft bound for an asteroid, a trip designed to take it past the moon into deep space.
No matter what happens, said Gialich, the company plans to land its next spacecraft, called Vestri, on the asteroid as early as next year. The 2022 OB5 asteroid is charted to be about 403,000 miles from Earth in early 2026, according to the Space Reference website. In prior years, the asteroid has been as far away as 10 million miles, the website said.
From Science Fiction to Reality
The Seal Beach-based startup wants to locate platinum group and other metals, then mine them and bring the valuable goods back to Earth in a long-shot bid for commercial success.
Retrieving platinum metals is a key goal of the planned asteroid missions, which once seemed more like science fiction than reality.
The platinum metals are used in products ranging from jewelry to catalytic converters in cars, to electronics and cancer-fighting drugs.
The company has about 36 employees, all working at the Seal Beach headquarters.
The 265-pound asteroid-surveying spacecraft was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on a Space X Falcon 9 Rocket. It generates power from its solar panels.
“I want to remind everybody this was a test mission. It was built in 10 months at an accelerated pace. The point of this mission was to learn, and I think we’ve learned a lot,” Gialich said as the problems surfaced.
Communication with the space probe is critical, which is why the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a radio license for the company.
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.
$55M Financing
It had raised $55 million in financing as of October from investors such as Nova Threshold, Alexis Ohanian’s 776, Initialized, Caladan, YC, Uncorrelated Ventures and billionaire Jed McCaleb.
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 CEO: Space is Unforgiving
Matt Gialich, the head of asteroid mining company AstroForge in Seal Beach, has plenty of strong words of commitment after its Odin spacecraft mission headed toward likely failure.
“I want to tell you guys everything — the errors we made, the issues we had, all the problems we encountered, and everything that went wrong. Because I think, as a team and as a company, and as humans, that’s how we get better at these missions,” co-founder and CEO Gialich said in an update on March 1.
He added: “Regardless of the outcome of Odin, regardless if we ever talk to it again or we don’t, we’re going to roll these findings into the next mission. And we’ll see you back here in about a year when we take another stab at it.”
He made his spirit of perseverance clear in a blog posting:
“While we can’t guarantee success, one thing is certain: we will keep learning, iterating and taking shots on goal—because space is unforgiving, and you only get better by doing.”
—Kevin Costelloe
