Minerals are in short supply on Earth. This startup wants to mine asteroids | CNN

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The electric scooter company where Matt Gialich once worked had to suspend production because of a shortage of platinum, a key component of microprocessors that translate control commands into motors.

Jaric’s childhood love of space led him into engineering, and he got a job at satellite launch company Virgin Orbit before it went bankrupt, and he began thinking about how to extract metals from asteroids. Scientists believe that these celestial debris are by-products of the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago and are rich in metals that are in short supply on Earth.

In 2022, Gialich and Jose Acain, who has nearly a decade of experience at SpaceX and NASA, founded AstroForge. Now, the California-based startup is trying to make asteroid mining a reality.

The company is not alone. The clean energy transition is expected to lead to a surge in demand for mineral resources, and interest in extracting minerals from previously untapped resources, such as the seafloor and space, is growing. Companies around the world have raised tens of millions of dollars to test asteroid mining technology.

Some say the idea is too expensive and far-fetched. But Gialich, 38, thinks it will come to fruition soon. Going out and getting resources from space is the holy grail, he said. I think we’ve finally reached a tipping point where we can handle it.

Jalic has no hesitation in admitting that his company’s plans are ambitious. We’re going to have a lot of failures, he said.

In a nutshell, AstroForge is trying to send a small refinery into space that can extract minerals from asteroids and then bring the valuable metals back to Earth, leaving the rest behind. The company aims to produce platinum group metals (PGMs) on M-type (metallic) asteroids, which are used in everything from jewelry to catalytic converters that filter car exhaust to anti-cancer drugs.

Platinum group metals such as platinum and iridium are also key feedstocks for emerging clean energy technologies. For example, green hydrogen production is expected to drive significant growth in mineral demand. But supplies on Earth are limited and geographically concentrated.

While it sounds like a plot straight out of the latest season of Apple TV+ show For All Mankind, which involves an elaborate plan to harness an asteroid and bring it into Earth orbit for mining, Gialich says that’s not what we do at all .

Last April, AstroForge launched its first mission, called Brokkr-1, sending into space a microsatellite equipped with a refining system the size of two loaves of bread. The spacecraft carries a preload of asteroid-like material that is planned to be evaporated and sorted into its elemental components in orbit.

Things didn’t go according to plan and the refinery demonstration has yet to happen. But Gilich said the company learned a lot, such as how well the equipment it purchased from its suppliers performed and whether the machines could survive liftoff and send signals back from space.

AstroForge’s patented refinery has already been tested on the ground in space-like conditions, he said. He added that this makes AstroForge the only company with a refinery capable of converting M-type asteroids into platinum group metals in space.

This year, an AstroForge spacecraft will fly aboard American space exploration company Intuitive Machines’ lunar mission. But AstroForge will jump in and use its own propulsion system to fly by an asteroid it believes is metallic to examine its composition and take photos. (Gialich declined to specify which asteroid the company is targeting.) If the mission is successful, AstroForge would be the first commercial company to venture into deep space, the company said. It could also provide the first high-resolution images of metallic asteroids.

Asteroid mining may only be a matter of time, experts say, as interest in asteroids is surging to better understand Earth’s origins and its composition, potentially laying the groundwork for miners.

Dan Britt, director of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science at the University of Central Florida, who is not directly involved with AstroForge, pondered: I guess you could ask if [humans] It’s totally crazy to do this. The answer is, it’s probably a little early, but we’re not completely crazy yet.

Agencies such as JAXA, Japan Space Agency and NASA have already brought asteroid samples back to Earth, proving at least to some extent that it can be done.

China plans to launch a mission in 2025 to collect samples from near-Earth asteroids, while the United Arab Emirates Space Agency plans to launch a mission to explore the asteroid belt in 2028.

NASA has a spacecraft on its way to the asteroid Psyche, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter, but it won’t get there until 2029. The iron in metallic asteroids is worth $10,000 quadrillion more. (NASA scientists have been excellent allies, Gialich said, providing valuable expertise to AstroForge.)

Some in the scientific community are skeptical that the private sector can afford asteroid mining. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is the first U.S. mission to collect asteroid samples and bring them back to Earth, costing hundreds of millions of dollars (excluding launch costs). It landed in the Utah desert last year and returned only 122 grams, making it the largest asteroid sample ever collected.

Gillich said it’s not really a question of whether it can be done from a physics perspective. The question is can you do it so that it makes sense.

Others have tried and failed. Planetary Resources, for example, was founded in 2012 and is backed by high-profile investors including Titanic director James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page. By 2020, it had an online fire sale after facing financing difficulties and being acquired by a blockchain company. (Buyers at an online auction bought a plastic bucket filled with tangled wires for $10 and a pair of used insulated gloves for $20.)

A lot has changed too. Private companies like SpaceX have significantly reduced the cost of space travel. Gialich said more is now known about the 1.3 million asteroids in the solar system, so companies like his don’t have to waste resources searching for them, and AstroForge has invested in developing algorithms that will allow it to share rides and reach them. Place you want to go.

Britt said reducing transportation costs is key to developing an off-world economy. of a ring fragment, as well as a series of journeys to asteroids near Jupiter, and had an asteroid named after him in recognition of his contribution to asteroid research.

These changes sparked a wave of new interest. Other companies, such as Los Angeles-based TransAstra and China-based Origin Space, are working on technologies to mine space resources.

AstroForge has raised $13 million in seed funding to date. The company said the second mission will cost less than $10 million, meaning it will be putting most of its eggs in one basket. “It’s clear these are high-risk, high-reward businesses,” Gilich said.

He didn’t have a backup plan if the planned mission didn’t work out. who cares? You go out and try these big missions, these big gambles, and if it doesn’t work, I don’t know. I guess I’m going to look for a job somewhere else? He said. I’m just focused on plan A and trying to make it happen.

If all goes well, the company’s ultimate goal is to bring back about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of platinum group metals per mission, a payload that could be worth about $70 million, depending on the metal and its price at the time. Despite all the problems with our schedule, we’re still trying to mine an asteroid and bring it back by the end of this decade, Gilich said.

Because the company is targeting relatively small asteroids, there is less gravity to overcome and therefore less fuel to burn.

Its all-or-nothing low-cost approach could help push asteroid mining closer to reality.

He said, even if we don’t succeed and we fail as a company, I hope we can push this a little bit and prove that you can do more science with less money.

Britt says asteroid mining could eventually happen, and the technology on the market is already far more advanced than a soggy bar napkin with a bunch of equations and diagrams drawn on it.

But he expects the technology will need to advance further before investors are willing to invest large sums of money.

That’s part of what startups like AstroForge are doing, creating new technologies and engineering, Britt said.

It may be years before we know whether AstroForges’ attempt will have a lasting impact on the broader push to extract minerals from space. But it may be best remembered for its moonshots. ‘I wish there was at least one aerospace company working on this,’ Gilich said.