Destination: Secret asteroid
Company is planning covert space mining mission, a trend astronomers don’t welcome
For generations, Western space missions have largely occurred out in the open. We knew where they were going, why they were going there and what they planned to do. But the world is on the verge of a new era in which private interests override such openness, with big money potentially on the line.
Sometime in the coming year, a spacecraft from AstroForge, an American asteroid-mining firm, may be launched on a mission to a rocky object near Earth’s orbit. If successful, it will be the first wholly commercial deep-space mission beyond the moon. AstroForge, however, is keeping its target asteroid secret.
Covert commercial space missions are an emerging trend that astronomers and other experts do not welcome. Such missions highlight gaps in the regulation of spaceflight as well as concerns about whether exploring the cosmos will continue to benefit all humankind.
“I’m very much not in favor of having stuff swirling around the inner solar system without anyone knowing where it is,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.
But for AstroForge, the calculation is simple: If it reveals the destination, a competitor may grab the asteroid’s valuable metals for itself.
“Announcing which asteroid we are targeting opens up risk that another entity could seize that asteroid,” said Matt Gialich, AstroForge’s chief executive.
For missions beyond Earth, there are no legal restrictions against keeping a deep space mission’s destination secret, said Michelle Hanlon, a law professor specializing in space at the University of Mississippi.
“We don’t have an actual process for deep-space missions like this,” she said, because “there is no licensing process” in the United States.
AstroForge’s mission, Odin, would be the second spacecraft it has sent to space. Its first in April, Brokkr-1, was a microwave-size machine weighing about 25 pounds. Its goal was to practice refining metals in the environment of space. The spacecraft has encountered problems, however, the company said on Dec. 11. AstroForge is in a “race against time” to get Brokkr-1 working before it is lost.
Odin, on the other hand, weighs a much heftier 220 pounds. AstroForge plans for it to piggyback on a robotic mission to the moon in 2024 by the company Intuitive Machines that is sponsored by NASA and being launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. A launch date has not yet been set.
The plan is for Odin to be released to venture into deep space beyond lunar orbit. Within a year, according to AstroForge, it will fly past the mystery asteroid, taking pictures and looking for evidence of metal.
AstroForge is aiming for what is suspected to be an M-type asteroid. These are thought to be fragmented pieces of failed planetary cores and may be rich in valuable platinum-group metals, which have a wide range of uses.
So far AstroForge has raised $13 million from investors. A full mining mission would require a much larger investment. But there are riches to be made if the company is successful. On Earth, the metals that may be on M-type asteroids can be difficult and expensive to mine. Iridium, for example, sells for thousands of dollars per ounce.