en.Wedoany.com Reported - Asteroid mining startup AstroForge has completed assembly of its latest spacecraft, DeepSpace-2, which is scheduled to launch later this year as a rideshare payload aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The launch will also carry Intuitive Machines' IM-3 lunar lander mission. The company announced this on June 4, stating that the spacecraft will subsequently undergo environmental testing.
DeepSpace-2 will fly by a near-Earth asteroid, but the final destination depends on the specific launch time of the mission. AstroForge CEO Matt Gialich stated that the company has a range of potential asteroid targets, selecting one based on the launch date, which may only be finalized days before launch after reaching the pad. The spacecraft will take two to nine months to reach its destination and will capture images using two high-resolution cameras. The primary objective of this mission is to validate spacecraft performance, as it is part of a series of low-cost spacecraft the company is developing for its asteroid exploration program.
As the company's second interplanetary mission, DeepSpace-2 incorporates lessons learned from its first mission, Odin. Odin launched last year as a rideshare payload on the IM-2 mission but failed shortly after deployment when its solar panels did not deploy correctly, causing the spacecraft to lose power. AstroForge has applied these experiences to the new design, building in extensive contingency measures within the spacecraft to ensure power even if the solar panels do not fully deploy, and to enable full mission execution with only one array fully deployed. Additionally, the company has strengthened pre-flight testing.
DeepSpace-2 is the first flight of a new modular spacecraft platform developed by AstroForge, which can carry up to 50 kilograms of payload on future missions. The company aims to support its asteroid mining plans through this low-cost platform, which can also be applied to scientific missions. Gialich revealed that the spacecraft costs slightly less than $5 million, with the total cost of the entire DeepSpace-2 mission under $10.5 million. AstroForge's long-term goal is to mine metallic asteroids, and in a statement, the company noted that the mineral wealth of the solar system will become increasingly important for humanity's advanced future.
Notably, SpaceX also listed asteroid mining as a potential market to pursue in its initial public offering prospectus, planning to extract metals and other critical resources from near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, though no specific timeline was provided. Gialich welcomed this, stating that the ultimate form of space commerce is the exploitation of cosmic resources, and anyone thinking about how to transform society must consider asteroid mining.
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