Despite several attempts over the past several years to perform such a remarkable feat as mine floating asteroids in space, none of yet succeeded in acquiring the materials and thus bringing them back to earth. However, AstroForge wants to tip these scales in its favor, thanks in large part to its most recent seed funding headed by the likes of Initialized Capital at a $13 million premium, with investments aided by Soma, Seven Seven Six, Liquid 2, EarthRise, and Area VC.
The California-based startup, which began operations in Jan. of this year, will utilize this new capital for its first two missions and an operational test flight, which will see AstroForge leveraging a SpaceX launch next year to deliver its equipment into the stars. The company was founded by Matt Gialich and Jose Acain, who consider the tech behind their startup incredibly innovative and varied from predecessors in the field.
"Our real mission is to take asteroid mining out of the realm of sci-fi into the realm of reality," explains Gialich to Space.com.
Utilizing a high-rated vacuum that works in zero gravity, AstroForge is attempting to collect samples from asteroids that seemingly have little to no gravitational fields, sized at about 20 meters to 1.5 kilometers. Its technology supposedly only weighs about 200 kilograms, allowing it versatility in the space of travel via lunar and geosynchronous trajectories, as well as while in operation.
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Utilizing a high-rated vacuum that works in zero gravity, AstroForge attempts to collect samples from asteroids that seemingly have little to no gravitational fields, sized at about 20 meters to 1.5 kilometers. Its technology supposedly only weighs about 200 kilograms, allowing it versatility in the space of travel via lunar and geosynchronous trajectories and while in operation.
Related Article: NASA Psyche Mission to Delay Due to Glitch; SpaceX Falcon to Bring it to 'Metal World'
Though it has remained tight-lipped on most of its internal goals, AstroForge's main targets in its asteroid mining operations are highly valued metals, the main among them being within the six platinum-group metals (PGMs), like iridium and platinum. While these same types of metals can just as easily be discovered and mined on earth, it creates a ton of pollution, and they aren't exactly as simple for the United States to acquire, as reserves in its domain are extremely limited.
Next year's SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, which is slated for departure next Jan, will see the company's so-called AstroForge 6U cubesat sent into space to acquire and return with platinum from a nearby asteroid in orbit. The tech is still being prepared by a UK and New Zealand satellite manufacturing company called OrbAstro.
Founders Gialich and Acain are not new to the field of aerospace technology, as they worked at such valued organizations as NASA, Virgin Orbit, and even the aforementioned SpaceX. With all but a team of four current full-time employees, AstroForge takes on a huge gamble and a momentous position in the realm of space mining, an area that has been largely wrought with difficulties, most prominent among them being financial and time constraints. Thus, speed is of utmost importance.
"We need to go fast, and we're willing to take more risks and go fast. We know we're gonna have some failures along the way, and we welcome them," said Gialich. "That's how we learn."
Several other companies have tried similar ventures in the past, such as Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, all to no avail. But, China, on the other hand, has maintained a rather large foothold in space and is even moving closer to accurately performing such tasks, as its Shenzhen Origin Space Technology launched the space mining satellite NEO-1 in April.
