AstroForge

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AstroForge is an aerospace company based in Huntington Beach, California, and was founded by Matthew Gialich and Jose Acain on January 10, 2022. The company is working on developing asteroid mining technologies, aiming to become the first commercial entity to do so.^[1][2] As of 2024^[update], no commercial asteroid mining efforts have been successful, although several government-led missions have successfully returned asteroid samples.^[3]

Founded on January 10, 2022, AstroForge announced its ambition to become the world's first-ever asteroid mining company on May 26 of the same year. AstroForge spent several months raising about $13 million in seed funding, and developing technologies aimed to process asteroid materials.^[4] The company currently has over twenty employees.^[5] In April 2023, AstroForge completed its first mission on the path to commercialized asteroid mining. Launched via the SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket on its Transporter-7 rideshare mission and built by the aerospace company OrbAstro, the AstroForge 6U cubesat called Brokkr-1 was sent into Low Earth Orbit to test asteroid material refinement technologies.^[6][7] The aim was to separate precious metals like platinum from general materials like iron. However, problems communicating with the spacecraft kept the company from conducting the refinery demonstration. ^[8][9] On October 18, 2023, AstroForge completed a successful test of the flight propulsion system for their next mission, Odin.^[10]

AstroForge's ultimate goal in the field of asteroid mining is the extraction, refinement, and sale of platinum-group metals (PGMs) located within M-type asteroids near to Earth. These asteroids are expected to be quite small in comparison to main belt asteroids, being anywhere from around 20 to 300 meters in diameter. M-type asteroids are also believed to account for about 3-5% of all Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), meaning they're quite rare. AstroForge is currently considering five different asteroids that fit these qualifications as potential mining targets in future operations. Many past companies that were involved with space resources industries had an interest in extracting water ice within asteroids and splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen to create interplanetary fuel depots, but AstroForge is not interested in this concept due to the lack of a current market for interplanetary fuel depots, instead focusing on the extraction of high-demand precious metals.^[4][5] Although there have been a number of robotic missions that have returned asteroid material to Earth (JAXA's Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 probes along with NASA's Osiris-REx probe), the process has yet to be commercialized, or completed on an M-type asteroid given that the past research targets of JAXA and NASA were C-type asteroids.^[3][11]

Brokkr-1, built by the British satellite manufacturer, OrbAstro, was AstroForge's first orbital spacecraft consisting of a 6U cubesat. Its main purpose was to demonstrate technology to extract metals from asteroid materials. The payload was expected to vaporize “asteroid-like” material and sort out metals from other constituents.^[7]

The Brokkr-1 satellite, faced immediate challenges after its launch on April 15, 2023, aboard a SpaceX Transporter-7 rocket. The company struggled to identify its satellite among the 50 other spacecraft in the mission, a problem that was compounded by a malfunction during the deployment of the solar panel array. The magnetic field generated by the satellite's refining system interfered with its orientation system, making it difficult to align the antenna and fully deploy the solar panels. ^[12]

AstroForge revealed that they had identified the magnetic field issue before the launch but chose to proceed with the mission despite the risk. They opted to avoid a nine-month delay and the associated launch costs, even though it meant the satellite could potentially end up in a wobble that might disrupt communication.^[13]

In searching for the lost Brokkr-1, AstroForge noted that in the following weeks they established connections with space companies that had ground assets that could "help in identifying our satellite." On May 5, 2023, the first positive signal was received, which confirmed through telemetry that the satellite was in good condition.^[14]

AstroForge's second demonstration spacecraft, initially designated Brokkr-2 and later renamed Odin, was also built by OrbAstro but uses a larger 100-kilogram satellite bus. Odin's mission is to perform a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid and determine if the asteroid is metallic.^[7] The spacecraft will be launched into a heliocentric orbit as a rideshare payload of the IM-2 lunar mission,^[15] which is scheduled to take off in January 2025.^[16] Its spacecraft bus was completely rebuilt in-house mostly from scratch after the spacecraft failed vibration testing.^[17]

The third demonstration spacecraft, Vestri, will return to the same targeted metallic asteroid and land/dock with it.^[18]