AstroForge
TypePrivate
IndustryAerospace
FoundedJanuary 10, 2022
FounderMatt Gialich
Jose Acain
Headquarters
Huntington Beach, California
,
United States
Websitewww.astroforge.io

AstroForge is an American startup company founded by Matthew Gialich and Jose Acain on January 10, 2022, located in Huntington Beach, California. The company develops commercial asteroid mining technologies.[1] As of 2023, no commercialized efforts at asteroid mining have yet to be successful, but a number of asteroid sample-return missions have been completed.[2]

History

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 sever months raising about $13 million in seed funding, and developing technologies aimed to process asteroid materials.[3] The company currently has over twenty employees.[4] 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.[5][6] The aim is to separate precious metals like platinum from general materials like iron. Brokkr-1 is currently in orbit preparing to complete that experiment with x-ray technologies.[7] On October 18, 2023, AstroForge completed a successful test of the flight propulsion system for their next mission, Brokkr-2.[8]

Goals

Purpose

AstroForge's ultimate goal in the field of asteroid mining is to facilitate the extraction and sale of platinum-group metals (PGMs) located within M-type asteroids near to Earth. These asteroids are expected to be quite small, 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.[3][4] 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.[2][9]

Brokkr-2

References

  1. ↑ Gialich, Matt (November 8, 2023). "AstroForge". AstroForge. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  2. 1 2 Miller, Katrina (24 September 2023). "A NASA Spacecraft Comes Home With an Asteroid Gift for Earth". New York Times. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  3. 1 2 Wall, Mike (26 May 2022). "Asteroid-mining startup AstroForge raises $13 million, books launch for test mission". Space.com. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  4. 1 2 Payload. "Mining Asteroids, with Matt Gialich (AstroForge)" Publishing date - 11 July 2023; access date - 10 November 2023.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDk7Ybu8nGM
  5. ↑ Alamalhodaei, Aria (24 January 2023). "Asteroid mining startup AstroForge will test its metal refinery tech in space this year". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  6. ↑ Foust, Jeff (30 January 2023). "Asteroid mining startup AstroForge to launch first missions this year". SPACENEWS. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  7. ↑ Knapp, Alex (18 October 2023). "This Asteroid Mining Startup Is Ready To Launch The First-Ever Commercial Deep Space Mission". Forbes. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  8. ↑ Bamford, Craig (25 October 2023). "Astroforge Closer to Asteroid Mining with Successful Propulsion Test". SPACEREF. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  9. ↑ "Sample return from Hayabusa2 reveals early history of asteroid Ryugu". National History Museum. 22 September 2022. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
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