WASHINGTON - AstroForge, a startup that wants to mine asteroids and apparently isn't afraid of failure, has completed assembly of its DeepSpace-2 spacecraft. The company announced June 4 that the spacecraft will now undergo environmental testing - presumably the kind that doesn't involve exploding. DeepSpace-2 is scheduled to launch late this year as a rideshare payload on a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Intuitive Machines' IM-3 lunar lander mission.
The spacecraft will fly by a near Earth asteroid, though the destination depends on when the mission launches. “We have a series of asteroids that, depending on the day of launch, we will go to,” CEO Matt Gialich said. “We will pick a target probably a couple days before launch, once we’re on the pad.” So, they're basically deciding where to go on the way to the launchpad. Bold. The spacecraft will travel for between two and nine months, taking images with two high-resolution cameras. The main purpose is to demonstrate the performance of the spacecraft, which is intended to be part of a line of low-cost asteroid-prospecting vehicles.
DeepSpace-2 is the company's second interplanetary mission. Its first, Odin, launched as a rideshare payload on the IM-2 mission last year but malfunctioned shortly after deployment - the solar arrays failed to properly deploy, depriving it of power. AstroForge applied those lessons: the new solar arrays are designed to provide power even if they don't deploy, and the spacecraft can carry out its full mission if only one of the two arrays fully deploys. They also did more preflight testing. “We went so fast with Odin it was such a miracle we even got on the rocket,” Gialich said. “The lessons are test early and test often.”
DeepSpace-2 is the first flight of a new modular spacecraft platform that can carry up to 50 kilograms of payload on later missions. Gialich said the cost of the spacecraft was “just under” $5 million, with a total DeepSpace-2 mission cost of less than $10.5 million. “If this thing works, this is a revolution in the way we go explore the universe,” he said. The company's long-term ambitions involve mining metallic asteroids, arguing that “the mineral wealth of the Solar System will become increasingly important to humanity’s advanced future.”
AstroForge is not alone. SpaceX included asteroid mining as one of the future markets it may pursue in its initial public offering prospectus. “We plan to pursue asteroid mining operations to extract metals and other critical resources from near-Earth and main-belt asteroids,” SpaceX stated, without providing a timeline. Gialich welcomed the competition. “We might just be the only crazy people that go after it,” he said. “Now, I think Elon [Musk] jumping aboard means maybe there’s two crazy people going after it.”