Apr 28, 2025 04:44 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 28, 2025 05:06 PM by C C.)
https://www.freethink.com/space/asteroid...astroforge
EXCERPTS: It’s 2030. A shortage of rare metals needed to build many clean energy technologies threatens to stymie global decarbonization efforts, but thankfully, a mining startup just proved we can tap into a new source for the materials: asteroids.
[...] Over the millennia, we’ve mined the materials to make everything from arrowheads to smartphones. To reach the next level of civilization, though, we might need to take our mining efforts off-world — and a space startup unlike any other aims to be the one to break that new ground.
[...] To have a significant impact on climate change, we’re going to need to decarbonize a lot more than just mining, and many clean energy technologies, including solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, require their own kind of mined resource: platinum group metals (PGMs).
“Platinum group metals are critical for today’s energy sector industrial base and will play a key role in tomorrow’s decarbonized economy,” according to the US Department of Energy (DOE). However, these six metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum) are among the least abundant elements on Earth, and extracting and refining them is a complex, expensive process that requires a lot of energy and water.
[...] So, rather than continuing to rely on the Earth to provide the PGMs we need for the clean energy revolution (and many other applications), some people think we should start extracting the metals from asteroids.
[...] If we can extract PGMs from the asteroids in our galactic neighborhood, we could not only shore up the supply, but also avoid the drawbacks of mining them on Earth (water pollution, carbon emissions from equipment, etc.), and thanks to reusable rockets, the cost of reaching these valuable space rocks has never been lower.
[...] An asteroid mining company is going to need to be able to collect much more material, much more cheaply in order to make a profit, but no private company has ever even reached an asteroid, let alone collected a sample from it — and this isn’t for lack of trying. ... AstroForge, meanwhile, has successfully launched two spacecraft since its founding in 2022, but neither mission went as planned.
[...] However, these setbacks aren’t stopping the startup from moving forward with its third mission, Vestri, which is set to launch in 2026.
[...] Because metal-type asteroids are more than 90% iron, which is magnetic, the startup can take advantage of magnetism to help its spacecraft stick to the space rock, Jose Acain, AstroForge’s CTO and co-founder, told the Future of Space podcast in May 2024.
Once in place, a laser will vaporize part of the asteroid’s surface. AstroForge’s refinery technology will then use magnets to separate condensed nanoparticles of iron and other magnetic materials, which aren’t valuable enough to bring back to Earth, from the PGMs, which are not magnetic.
Demonstrating that this works is the goal of the Vestri mission. The startup won’t actually try to bring any asteroid samples home until its fourth mission, which Acain expects will launch about a year after Vestri. “That’s a two-year round trip, but before the end of the decade, we’ll hopefully have return samples,” he told Future of Space.
[....] AstroForge isn’t nearly as risk-averse as many others in the space industry. While NASA goes to great lengths to mitigate every possible risk before launching a mission, even if it means extending the timeline and increasing the budget, AstroForge was willing to launch Odin, despite estimating the mission had just a 30% chance of success.
“We knew where all our weak points were,” said Gialich. “I think the magic here is we still were okay with flying it…We still said, ‘We got to try it. Let’s go for it and see what we learn.’”
“We’re going to make dumb mistakes,” he added. “We’re going to really screw up things that are pretty easy, but we recognize them, and we go fix them in a way that makes sense to us.” (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: It’s 2030. A shortage of rare metals needed to build many clean energy technologies threatens to stymie global decarbonization efforts, but thankfully, a mining startup just proved we can tap into a new source for the materials: asteroids.
[...] Over the millennia, we’ve mined the materials to make everything from arrowheads to smartphones. To reach the next level of civilization, though, we might need to take our mining efforts off-world — and a space startup unlike any other aims to be the one to break that new ground.
[...] To have a significant impact on climate change, we’re going to need to decarbonize a lot more than just mining, and many clean energy technologies, including solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, require their own kind of mined resource: platinum group metals (PGMs).
“Platinum group metals are critical for today’s energy sector industrial base and will play a key role in tomorrow’s decarbonized economy,” according to the US Department of Energy (DOE). However, these six metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum) are among the least abundant elements on Earth, and extracting and refining them is a complex, expensive process that requires a lot of energy and water.
[...] So, rather than continuing to rely on the Earth to provide the PGMs we need for the clean energy revolution (and many other applications), some people think we should start extracting the metals from asteroids.
[...] If we can extract PGMs from the asteroids in our galactic neighborhood, we could not only shore up the supply, but also avoid the drawbacks of mining them on Earth (water pollution, carbon emissions from equipment, etc.), and thanks to reusable rockets, the cost of reaching these valuable space rocks has never been lower.
[...] An asteroid mining company is going to need to be able to collect much more material, much more cheaply in order to make a profit, but no private company has ever even reached an asteroid, let alone collected a sample from it — and this isn’t for lack of trying. ... AstroForge, meanwhile, has successfully launched two spacecraft since its founding in 2022, but neither mission went as planned.
[...] However, these setbacks aren’t stopping the startup from moving forward with its third mission, Vestri, which is set to launch in 2026.
[...] Because metal-type asteroids are more than 90% iron, which is magnetic, the startup can take advantage of magnetism to help its spacecraft stick to the space rock, Jose Acain, AstroForge’s CTO and co-founder, told the Future of Space podcast in May 2024.
Once in place, a laser will vaporize part of the asteroid’s surface. AstroForge’s refinery technology will then use magnets to separate condensed nanoparticles of iron and other magnetic materials, which aren’t valuable enough to bring back to Earth, from the PGMs, which are not magnetic.
Demonstrating that this works is the goal of the Vestri mission. The startup won’t actually try to bring any asteroid samples home until its fourth mission, which Acain expects will launch about a year after Vestri. “That’s a two-year round trip, but before the end of the decade, we’ll hopefully have return samples,” he told Future of Space.
[....] AstroForge isn’t nearly as risk-averse as many others in the space industry. While NASA goes to great lengths to mitigate every possible risk before launching a mission, even if it means extending the timeline and increasing the budget, AstroForge was willing to launch Odin, despite estimating the mission had just a 30% chance of success.
“We knew where all our weak points were,” said Gialich. “I think the magic here is we still were okay with flying it…We still said, ‘We got to try it. Let’s go for it and see what we learn.’”
“We’re going to make dumb mistakes,” he added. “We’re going to really screw up things that are pretty easy, but we recognize them, and we go fix them in a way that makes sense to us.” (MORE - missing details)