With a slate of two missions spread out over the year 2023, AstroForge is gearing up to revolutionize asteroid mining with a newfound technique it will test come April 2023. This initial launch will be a deciding moment for the startup as its platinum refining tool will be put to the test on an asteroid-esque material sample first before the second, more grueling launch in October, which will pit AstroForge's mining system against a real-world asteroid near earth.
Founded in 2021, AstroForge aims to limit Earth-bound emissions by way of taking resource mining into the stars. As witnessed mostly in Chile, large swaths of lithium mining have led to irreparable damage to the surrounding environment due in large part to the immense amount of water needed in the mining process. Additionally, according to Gunther Hilpert, Head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP, mining all but a mere ton of rare earth elements can produce as much as 2,000 tons of toxic waste.
For AstroForge, it's all about keeping this waste far away from Earth. AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich, who was tenured at such places as Bird Global and Virgin Orbit, explains to Bloomberg how his firm goes about refining entirely on the surface of the space-bound object. He claims that AstroForge does all of its "refining on site," otherwise upon "the asteroid itself."
The firm more recently saw a cash injection in the form of $13 million via Initialized Capital in a seed funding round in May 2022. It will soon be setting the stage for what it considers the very first commercial deep-space mission set outside Earth's gravity well - that is, of course, if one excludes SpaceX's initial launch in 2018, which carried with it into space a bright red Tesla Roadster.
The plan is simple. In April, AstroForge is prepared to launch its satellite into low-Earth orbit as a payload on the SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission. Next, it will send yet another craft, one that weighs 100 kilograms, onboard a Space Exploration Technologies rocket into deep space, where it should reach lunar orbit and eventually find an unspecified asteroid to begin its refining endeavors.
AstroForge relayed that it will most likely never give details on the asteriod in question. If anything, the company will only announce which specific asteroid it mined following the refinement process. As of yet, only 250 grams have been successfully mined in one go, and it's still on its way back to Earth on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. Thus, AstroForge has a long way to go before its dream is realized.
It is taking notes from prior failures, though. It is being aided on how to approach the asteroid selection process by Planetary Resources advisers, as well as gaining insight from the likes of former Deep Space Industries CEO Daniel Faber. Both companies sought to make similar ambitions in the asteroid mining space, yet eventually fizzled out.
And still, AstroForge isn't alone, despite even the previously failed attempts represented by the two aforementioned companies. Although seemingly somewhat novel in scope, asteroid mining isn't a new concept. China has long been invested in space, with Ye Peijian's well-known proposal for asteroid mining dating back to 2017. The country still plans to devise a so-called Near-Earth Object defense system, which it aims to have up by 2025.
