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As an asteroid mining start-up's latest mission goes awry, Josh Sims looks at how close we really are to extracting rare minerals from the many celestial bodies floating above us.
Thirty years ago the seminal BBC science programme Tomorrow's World made a few predictions about how the world might be by 2025. It was a testament to how hard predicting the technological future is: we would, the programme suggested, have microchip implants to help us deal with ATMs, chat with holographic helpmates in our homes and there would be riots over internet access.
The episode also suggested we would be mining asteroids by now. And while we aren't there yet, it's something that some start-ups argue will happen sooner than many imagined.
The founder of the California-based company AstroForge believes it will be the first to get there, and the company has already taken the first tentative steps. On 27 February 2025 it launched its first $6.5m (£5.1m) unmanned spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Around nine days later, AstroForge believes the spacecraft – named Odin – likely passed beyond the Moon and into deep space as planned.
Yes, there are a lot more baby steps to take. But we're going to start to actually do it. You have to try – Matt Gialich
Unfortunately, however, AstroForge developed major communications problems with Odin, which it is still trying to rectify at the time of writing. The firm hopes Odin has now entered its nine-month long coast to its mission destination: a fly-by of the carefully pre-selected asteroid 2022 OB5, some eight million km (five million miles) from Earth, which Odin will assess the composition of using its sensors.
"Move fast and break rocks" might be the mantra of Matt Gialich, AstroForge's ebullient founder with a penchant for swear words, who is not dissuaded by the perhaps unresolvable technical trouble. AstroForge expected nothing less than many hurdles and has, he says, learned much even if contact isn't made with this spacecraft again. "Yes, there are a lot more baby steps to take," he concedes. "But we're going to start to actually do it. You have to try."
Following a further launch next year, the company plans to develop ways to mine near-Earth asteroids for the valuable, concentrated metals some contain – particularly the platinum-group metals essential to much of our fuel cell and renewable technology. Scientists have highlighted that these are increasingly costly to mine on Earth – financially, environmentally, socially and even geopolitically.
But others question whether mining these metals in space and bringing them back to Earth is really feasible, especially in the near term – and whether it could have its own unique, but just as impactful, environmental costs.
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