The First Ever Asteroid Mining Mission Vanished In Space: Here's What Happened

This February, California-based asteroid mining startup AstroForge embarked on what it hoped would be one of the most important launches in history: the first commercial deep space mission. Strapped to the back of a SpaceX Falcon 9, the company's washing machine-sized satellite (dubbed Odin) was bound for the asteroid 2022 OB5 — a roughly 330-foot diameter space rock the company believes is rich with mineable materials. Odin's mission was to determine the metallic content of 2022 OB5 by flying within half a mile of the asteroid for about 5 hours, taking pictures of its crust in search of geological clues like fissures and craters that may reflect its composition. According to the company, this was the first step in what it hoped would lead to the company mining the asteroid by the end of the decade. 

Some scientists were skeptical about Odin's ability to determine an asteroid's composition through pictures. Even the company's CEO, Matt Gialich, cautioned that the quality of these images would be highly variable, telling the New York Times that the team may only receive clear pictures in the last ten minutes of the pass. Despite these precautions, Gialich was confident that AstroForge would combine its photo evidence with the asteroid's density (based on its gravitational pull on Odin) to determine 2022 OB5's composition. 

Unfortunately, AstroForge never got the chance to test its theory. Just forty-eight hours after Odin's launch, the probe had disappeared. What happened to Odin is both a testament to the rapid growth of asteroid mining and a reminder that the industry might be farther away than its staunchest proponents claim.

Founded by Gialich in 2022, AstroForge aims to send miniature refineries to M-type asteroids to extract critical metals. One of three types of asteroids, M-types are rich in nickel, iron, and Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) like platinum and iridium. Both metal types could prove extremely lucrative for asteroid miners, as iron and nickel can be repurposed for the space construction industry while PGMs are integral to advanced technologies like laptops, smartphones, and clean energy production.

Backed by a $55 million investment group led by Nova Threshold, the firm claims to have developed a means of refining space materials from the source, drastically reducing the costs and infrastructure typically associated with such projects.

In April 2023, the company launched its first mission, Brokkr-1, a toaster-sized Cubesat probe sent to test its refining capabilities in low-orbit. Unfortunately, the company ran into several technical issuesand was unable to communicate with its satellite.

Gialich views such 'failures' as learning experiences that bring his team closer to its goal. With a move-fast and break-things mentality typical of tech startups, Gialich hopes to accomplish several industry firsts, including extracting minerals from asteroids by the end of the decade.

Even before its launch, Odin reached a historic landmark when the Federal Communications Commission approved AstroForge as the first company licensed to transmit from deep space. This constituted a breakthrough in an industry dependent on advanced communication networks with ground-bound entities, and seemed to validate the team's operational confidence. However, the pre-flight process was all but easy.

Seven months before its launch, AstroForge had a problem: their spacecraft wasn't launch-worthy. Up to that point, the company had relied on 3^rd party vendors to build the bus that would carry its payload. However, a defect in the vehicle's baseplate found during the company's vibration testing meant Odin couldn't join SpaceX's February launch.

AstroForge solved this issue by manufacturing the vehicle in-house, designing, building, testing, and certifying a much larger, more complicated vehicle in about half the time of its previous missions. And while Gialich wrote in a blog post that this fit the company's learn-by-doing approach, it also meant that AstroForge entered its mission with a myriad of potential issues and a self-estimated 30% chance of success.

When Odin launched alongside Intuitive Machine's Mission 2 on February 26,  AstroForge knew the first few hours would prove the most important. Critically, the company needed to establish communication while the craft was close to Earth, thus enabling the firm to command and monitor its movements throughout its 300+ day mission. Luckily, the launch went without a hitch:Odin separated from the SpaceX craft 45 minutes after takeoff, oriented itself towards its deep-space trajectory, and turned on its power amplifier. However, within a few hours, issues began to arise.

AstroForge experienced its first critical issue within the first few hours of lift-off: its primary command station, a 5M dish dubbed Capricorn in Australia, couldn't communicate with Odin. For nearly eight hours, AstroForge unsuccessfully tried to contact its vessel. Then came the company's first breakthrough: an amateur German radio operator named Peter detected Odin's signal on Amsat.

However, even detecting Odin's frequency presented a problem for AstroForge, as it took hours to attribute the 13-second signal to the spacecraft. Once established, the company learned that three essential functions were operating as expected: Odin was fully booted, its power amplifier was on, and its solar panels were deployed and powering it as it ventured toward its target.

By hour 16, it was time for the India-based command center to establish contact. At this point, Odin was over 62,000 miles from Earth. To establish a link at that distance, the team needed to use a small beam width that provided little room for error. While interference from a local cell tower complicated the search, AstroForge spiraled out an extra degree from the expected flight path to make up for trajectory errors. Unfortunately, Bangalore confirmed what Australia had hours earlier: the craft was nowhere to be found.

Over the next twenty hours, AstroForge used stations in Kentucky, India, and South Africa to try and detect the craft, but signal bleed-through and poor configurations dampened progress. And while AmSat detected a second signal above South Africa, data corruption issues prevented AstroForge from determining more from the signal than the state of its batteries.

By the 36^th hour, Odin was roughly 186,411 miles away and was quickly approaching the same distance as the moon. To reach it, the team needed a larger satellite. But the team's dish in Bangalore suffered from more technical issues when AstroForge's uplink disrupted its receiving signals. As Gialich puts it, it was like "trying to hear a whisper in a room where someone is blasting music at full volume—it drowns everything else out." A backup dish in Wilheim, Germany, attempted to cover for the unusable one in India, but to no avail. 

By the time the AstroForge team hit the 2-day mark, they relied on observatory telescopes to find Odin and direct their signals. Unfortunately, Odin was too difficult to find. According to the company's latest update, while it continues to search for its wayward spacecraft, time and distance have made pinpointing the satellite's location a nearly hopeless endeavor. The world's first commercial deep space mission is now lost.

Ultimately, the company posits two prevailing theories for why they lost communication with Odin. The first is that Odin's solar panels didn't deploy correctly, forcing the satellite to enter a 'sun safe' mode that would prioritize essential systems over communication. The other is that it tumbled out of its break from the SpaceX satellite, causing the antenna to only face Earth intermittently, making communication occasional and brief.

Despite the mission's failures, AstroForge is adamant about its success. As CEO Matt Gailich said in a LinkedIn post shortly after the mission's conclusion, "You don't learn if you don't try. Odin was a pathfinder that gave us more learnings than we would have ever gotten on the ground." 

As AstroForge's Chief of Staff Chapman Snowden confirmed in a blog summary of the mission, the company's attention has "shifted to applying these hard-won insights to our next mission." Dubbed Vestri, AstroForge's next launch will be with Intuitive Machine's third lunar mission scheduled this October. Once again, AstroForge will target 2022 OB5 — this time with much greater ambitions. Not only will Vestri deliver a larger payload with enhanced power, but the mission will attempt to become the first private space vessel to land on an asteroid.

Whether the company can capitalize on its learning-by-breaking philosophy will determine if it reaches its ultimate goal of mining an asteroid for 2,200 pounds of PGMs by 2030. However, AstroForge isn't alone in its ambitions, and several companies will look to launch competing missions in the coming years. TransAstra, Karman+, and Asteroid Mining Corporationare a few of the companies looking to capitalize on deep space's mineral reserves. Unsurprisingly, several nation-states are also looking to enter the mix. To date, both Japan and the U.S. have launched successful asteroid missions, while competitors like China and the UAE will launch asteroid-centric missions in 2025 and 2028 respectively. NASA, for its part, hopes to reach the mineral-rich asteroid Psyche by 2029, which some estimate to house up to 27 quintillion dollars of mineable materials.

With both governments and private entities hoping to make asteroid mining a reality soon, the clock is ticking for AstroForge to put its mark on the next great space race. In such a rapidly developing industry, only one thing is for certain: asteroids will have a major impact on Earth's fate, and sooner than you may think.