AstroForge, a start-up that emerged from the incubator Y Combinator, said today that it raised $13 million to launch a spacecraft capable of demonstrating in-space mineral refining in 2023. If all goes according to plan, the company wants to start bringing back metals in the valuable platinum group from asteroids near the Earth by the end of the decade.<snip>The founders said they wouldn’t discuss specifically how their spacecraft will find asteroids and extract material from them, but they argue that “the only thing that hasn’t been demonstrated is the refinery operation in space.”They will launch a spacecraft on the next SpaceX ride share mission, in late 2022, with a payload that can refine pure metals from an “asteroid” created on Earth to match the properties of future targets in deep space. If that demonstration succeeds, the founders believe they will be able to develop a full-scale mining mission.
Hopefully they get farther than DSI or Planetary. Please, at least no NFT's of metal ingots...
Quote from: Asteroza on 05/29/2022 10:31 pmHopefully they get farther than DSI or Planetary. Please, at least no NFT's of metal ingots...Not likely but we live in hope.Sent from my SM-A528B using Tapatalk
"We don't need that much capital," Gialich said. The company plans to design spacecraft small enough to fly as part of rideshare launches. "We're going after this by bringing along a very, very small spacecraft to mine asteroids. So our first return mission is not going to return trillions of dollars. It's not going to return billions of dollars. It's going to return tens of millions of dollars."Platinum is currently priced at $31,000 a kilogram, so the company is likely talking about bringing hundreds of kilograms of platinum back to Earth, or less. To be clear, this is still an enormous leap—NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission is believed to be returning about 1 kg of unrefined material from the surface of an asteroid at a mission cost of about $800 million.To do this, the company plans to build and launch what Gialich characterized as a "small" spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid to extract regolith, refine that material, and send it back toward Earth on a ballistic trajectory. It will then fly into Earth's atmosphere with a small heat shield and land beneath a parachute. The goal is to build each of these satellites at a recurring cost of significantly less than $10 million.
As a Planetary Resources alum, planetary geochemist with a doctorate in part on platinum in young planets, and former consultant on a terrestrial platinum processing project, it looks to me like the history of asteroid mining is repeating itself.Some hurdles I foresee:1. Extracting ppm quantities of Pt from metallic asteroids is far, far more technically challenging & energy intensive than extracting water or hydroxyl from carbonaceous asteroids (what PRI and DSI were attempting, and that was already clearly too hard).2. While OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 have successfully collected samples from their carbonaceous targets, no spacecraft has visited a metallic asteroid. We know very little about these worlds, but will learn a lot when NASA's @MissionToPsyche arrives in 2026.3. All large-scale terrestrial platinum refining processes require two very important ingredients: liquid water and gravity, neither of which will be available in abundance in space. They claim to have refining technology but provide no details. https://multotec.com/public/uploads/files/media_images/media_1754881bcedbd4eadb4af6edaa36aaa2.jpg4. I know of no remote sensing instrument capable of detecting Pt. Pt is highly siderophile (iron-loving), so proxies could be used (a neutron spectrometer perhaps?), but there's no way of knowing how much Pt is present until a sample is brought back to a lab on Earth.5. All of what they described in the article for <$10M per mission? Come on.I truly wish them the best—they've got their work cut out for them. Just like many space companies founded by engineers, my strongest recommendation to them is to hire or at least consult with a planetary scientist. (No, I'm not interested.)
Asteroid-mining startup AstroForge Inc. plans to launch its first two missions to space this year as it seeks to extract and refine metals from deep space.The first launch, scheduled for April 2023, will test AstroForge’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The second, planned for October, will scout for an asteroid near Earth to mine.The missions are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals from asteroids, with the aim of bringing down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon dioxide emissions that stem from mining rare Earth elements on our own planet, Chief Executive Officer Matthew Gialich said in an interview.
A startup with plans to mine asteroids for metals says it will launch its first two missions this year, including one that will fly by a near Earth asteroid.AstroForge announced Jan. 24 that it will launch a cubesat into low Earth orbit in April to test its refinery technologies. That will be followed in October by a larger spacecraft that will go by a near Earth asteroid, collecting data about its composition, including the presence of platinum-group metals, or PGMs.The 6U cubesat, called Brokkr-1, was built by U.K. company OrbAstro and is scheduled to launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-7 rideshare mission. Matt Gialich, co-founder and chief executive of AstroForge, said in an interview that the spacecraft “is essentially ready to be put on the rocket.”
I hate to sound like a broken record, but without legal protection for discoveries, these companies are all destined to fail.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but without legal protection for discoveries, these companies are all destined to fail.https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39504.0
Asteroid-Mining Startup AstroForge to Launch First Space Missions This YearQuote from: bloomberg.comAsteroid-mining startup AstroForge Inc. plans to launch its first two missions to space this year as it seeks to extract and refine metals from deep space.The first launch, scheduled for April 2023, will test AstroForge’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The second, planned for October, will scout for an asteroid near Earth to mine.The missions are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals from asteroids, with the aim of bringing down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon dioxide emissions that stem from mining rare Earth elements on our own planet, Chief Executive Officer Matthew Gialich said in an interview.
Well, we know what asteroid material is like because of meteorites, asteroid sample return and asteroid surface operations, so their test of a processing method is not necessarily unreasonable. Their foolish pursuit of secrecy when it comes to identifying the target won't win them any friends, however. Doubtless at this point they think they won't need friends but space is tricky. My prediction - they will not succeed because they won't find enough of what they want before the cash runs out.
Yeah, just hoping that some company will survive in this business is not a great strategy.IF some company did manage to find a mine some metal in space, there is this big country called "China" that would be exploiting the discovery very quickly.Given the lack of legal protection for claims, investors will be leery of putting their money in this field. So, absent protection for claims, it is shampoo, rinse, repeat, ie, company announces they are going to mine an asteroid, investors consider but decline, company goes away, posters here claim that there is no need to protect claims, the next company up will do okay.
Quote from: Phil Stooke on 01/30/2023 08:08 pmWell, we know what asteroid material is like because of meteorites, asteroid sample return and asteroid surface operations, so their test of a processing method is not necessarily unreasonable. Their foolish pursuit of secrecy when it comes to identifying the target won't win them any friends, however. Doubtless at this point they think they won't need friends but space is tricky. My prediction - they will not succeed because they won't find enough of what they want before the cash runs out.ah, so they have a way to get rid of the stuff that usually burns up in the atmosphere to get to the useful parts? Equally impressive.
Quote from: high road on 01/31/2023 11:01 amQuote from: Phil Stooke on 01/30/2023 08:08 pmWell, we know what asteroid material is like because of meteorites, asteroid sample return and asteroid surface operations, so their test of a processing method is not necessarily unreasonable. Their foolish pursuit of secrecy when it comes to identifying the target won't win them any friends, however. Doubtless at this point they think they won't need friends but space is tricky. My prediction - they will not succeed because they won't find enough of what they want before the cash runs out.ah, so they have a way to get rid of the stuff that usually burns up in the atmosphere to get to the useful parts? Equally impressive.Sounds like plan "refine the asteroid by breaking it into chunks and hucking those at the Earth" would eliminate a good amount of orbital processing equipment, and land your preprocessed ore in your literal backlot for further processing.
The first launch, scheduled for April 2023, will test AstroForge’s technique...
Ah, so they have a way to break apart and haul asteroid chunks around the solar system? Someone tell the Planetary Society that AstroForge solved the whole asteroid protection thing.
Quote from: high road on 01/31/2023 11:27 amAh, so they have a way to break apart and haul asteroid chunks around the solar system? Someone tell the Planetary Society that AstroForge solved the whole asteroid protection thing.Bingo. The asteroid baggers do not really have a proposed technique to despin a huge asteroid with a tiny spacecraft.
"AstroForge is now in 'a race against time' to complete the refinery checkouts and demonstrate the tech before they lose contact completely, which the company estimates could be three more months.
