Private companies are aiming to boost their microwave-sized spacecraft towards the asteroid later this week. It aims to launch a future in which precious metals are mined around solar systems to generate vast wealth on Earth.
“If this works out well, this will probably be the biggest business ever devised,” said Matt Gialich, founder and CEO of Astroforge, a robot probe builder and operator. Masu.
That may sound familiar: A decade ago, news articles were doing well on the wealth promised by the Asteroid Mining Company. But things didn't go well.
“We blossomed three to four years early in the big gold rush of investor enthusiasm for space projects,” said David Gump, former CEO of Deep Space Industries. In the end, the money ran out. Deep Space Industries was sold in 2019 and never reached the asteroid.
Astroforge is betting that things are different this time. The California company has already launched a demonstration spacecraft into Earth orbit, raising $55 million in funding. Currently, the company is actually set up to travel towards an asteroid near the deep sea.
The Astroforge's second robotic spacecraft, called Odin, will be bundled from Florida on Wednesday, with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will fire privately built Moonlander and the NASA movement's lunar orbiter. Approximately 45 minutes after launch, Odin begins his solo journey into independent deep space. Meanwhile, the lunar mission (Athena Lander from the intuitive machine and the NASA lunar pioneer) takes off on its own journey.
Commercial companies have never launched operational missions beyond the month. Astroforge was the first company to receive a license from the Federal Communications Commission that allows it to be sent from Deep Space. Astroforge communicates with spacecraft using private food in India, South Africa, Australia and the United States.
At first, Astroforge kept the target asteroid a secret and feared its competitors. However, in January, the company announced its destination, an object called the 2022 OB5. Giarich said he is confident in the benefits of Astroforge.
“We're the only ones who actually do something,” he said. “Who else is preparing to go to the asteroid?”
The Asteroid 2022 OB5 is small, less than 330 feet wide, and is the size of a soccer field. The Astroforge science team evaluated asteroids using telescopes, including the Lowell Observatory in Arizona and the large binocular telescope in Arizona, and estimated their metal content. They believe that the 2022 OB5 is M-type and is a class of asteroids that contains 5% of known space rocks that can have a large amount of metal. The asteroid analysis has not yet been published.
Stephanie Jalmak, a planetary scientist at the Harvard Smitonian Center for Astrophysics, said the company's analysis was plausible.
“There are several different ways to determine if it's M,” she said, including research into asteroid brightness and albedo. Higher brightness suggests the presence of more metals. She praised her for being more open about the target asteroid. “I thought it was really good,” she said.
M-type asteroids are thought to be rich in metals such as iron and nickel. These could serve as resources for construction in space, perhaps to build new spacecrafts and machines. However, some M types may be abundant in more valuable Platinum Group Metal, or PGM, used on devices such as smartphones. When these are mined in abundance and brought to the Earth, the wind becomes larger.
“If platinum is included, an asteroid at a distance of about 117,000 tons of platinum will contain approximately 117,000 tons of platinum,” said Mitch Hunter Skalion, founder and chief executive of the UK's Asteroid Mining Corporation. It's there. His company has taken a slower approach and plans to demonstrate the moon's technology in the next decade.
“It's a global supply of about 680 years. Hunter Skalion said, “Even if you get 1,000 tons of platinum, you'll still be able to get along with your next half-century mobile phone. I'm sitting.”
Not everyone is sure that invaluable metals will be found within the M-type asteroid.
“Asteroids don't have enough PGM to justify it as an independent business,” says Joel C. Sercel, founder and CEO of Transastra, used to grab and extract resources. said Joel C. Sercel, a company that develops huge bags that can be made. Asteroid of the future. The company will be testing a small mockup of technology on the International Space Station after being launched into the station this summer.
The legality of mining asteroids and selling resources remains uncertain.
In 2015, President Obama signed a law allowing asteroid resources to be sold on Earth. But no one is going to test this law yet.
“Astroforge is going to argue? What is the fact that they will reach this asteroid before it means no one else can go to it?” University of Mississippi's professor of space specialising in law. I asked one Michelle Hanlon. “It would be interesting to see the international reaction.”
Odin will arrive in the second half of 2025 after his 2022-2022 OB5 journey. Asteroids follow an orbit around the Sun, similar to Earth. The probe passes the asteroid at a distance of 0.6 miles to take photos using two black and white cameras. Zooming an object at thousands of miles per hour will result in a 5.5 hour encounter on the spacecraft.
“And perhaps it's the last 10 minutes that you're taking a photo that's bigger than pixels,” Gialich said.
The goal is that these photos are sufficient to determine whether the asteroid is metal.
“Hopefully it looks shiny,” Giarich said. However, it is highly likely that all metals will be mixed into the asteroid soil and will not be visible.
“I don't know how much compositional information we can get from purely images,” said Dr. Jarmak, a planetary scientist.
However, surface craters may suggest hidden metal, Giarich added, “We expect cracks to occur on the surface.”
The spacecraft also accurately tracks the location of asteroids in space during flybys. In doing so, you can calculate the density of the asteroid based on the gravity pull on the spacecraft. Higher density suggests more metal content.
Success is not guaranteed. Astroforge's first mission, Brokkr-1, was launched into low-Earth orbit in April 2023 to test the company's planned asteroid purification technology. However, the mission encountered problems and burned out into the atmosphere. Gialich said Astroforge improved its technology in Odin Spacecraft by relying on in-house produced components.
Astroforge's third mission, Vestri, is the most ambitious. The size of a refrigerator, the spacecraft will be designed to land on an asteroid soon next year. If metallic content is confirmed, it will probably be designed even for 2022 OB5s. The Vestri landing legs are equipped with magnets that attach to the surface of an asteroid and are designed to estimate the number of PGMs.
It is unclear how successful this mission will be. “If it's made of solid metal, it sticks,” said Benjamin Weiss, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, many asteroids are known to be mountains of tiled rubs. This is a collection of rocks that are gently held together by gravity, such as the asteroid Bennu, which NASA's Orisys Rex spacecraft visited.
“They're barely together,” Dr. Weiss said. This means that the magnets may pull some rocks away from the surface as the lander floats.
The spacecraft, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, visited the site, suspected of being an M-type asteroid, a flyby of the 2010 asteroid 21 Lutetia. The existence of metals at the time was inconclusive. NASA's $1.2 billion spiritual spacecraft, NASA's $1.2 billion spacecraft, is heading for an asteroid with the same name by 2029. Astronomers believe that asteroids are fragments of the core of planets that failed, and are rich in metal.
The results of the 2022 OB5 Odin Mission analysis could lead to an appetite-inducing bullying for Psyche. “If it turns out to be made of solid metal, it would support the idea that some of these larger bodies, like Psyche, could be the core of a differentiated body,” says Dr. Weiss. said.
Lindy Elkins Tanton of Arizona State University said he is a principal investigator of spirit and an advisor to Astroforge. “It's going to be a bit of a game changer,” she said.
Others are focusing more on what Odin means in asteroid mining in the present tense.
“This is probably the highest achievement in the sector to date,” said Hunter Skalion of the Asteroid Mining Corporation. Transastra's Sercel also praised the company.
“We wish GungHo and good luck for Astroforge,” he said. “We're 100% behind them.”
Now there is a small problem with launching and traveling to asteroids, and hope that what Odin found will lead to long-awaited wealth from asteroid mining.
“If we make it, I'm popping champagne,” Giarich said.
