Spaceflight 🚀#AstroForge is tracking several candidate asteroids, each of which is about 400 meters 📏 across. There is no shortage of potential targets. Scientists estimate that there are about 10 million near-Earth #asteroids ☄️, perhaps 3 to 5 percent of these are rich in #metals, so there are potentially hundreds of thousands of candidates for #mining. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/against-all-odds-an-asteroid-mining-company-appears-to-be-making-headway/
#AstroForge launches the #Odin mission in 📆 January 2025. A third attempt is planned for late 2025. The fourth mission will focus on extracting and refining #asteroids’ metals before returning to Earth https://www.mining.com/astroforge-secures-first-ever-commercial-license-for-asteroid-mission/
One of two metallic #asteroids floating in Earth's vicinity could boast more #iron, #nickel and #cobalt than the entirety of our #global 🌏 metal reserves. https://www.cnet.com/science/rare-asteroids-near-earth-may-become-targets-for-space-mining/
Recent missions to rendezvous with and to orbit and land on #asteroids ☄️ have demonstrated that #SpaceMining could be just a matter of time ⏱️ https://phys.org/news/2024-10-asteroid-potential-trillion-dollar-industry.html
Asteroid mining: A potential trillion-dollar industry
Earth's newest celestial neighbor has finally arrived. Astronomers using a powerful telescope in Sutherland, South Africa, first detected the 33-foot-long asteroid in August, reporting their discovery in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
“A single one-kilometer-diameter asteroid, if it was platinum-bearing, would contain about 117,000 tons of #platinum. That’s about 680 years of global supply. You’re talking about centuries of platinum demand from a single #asteroid ☄️”. #Odin will arrive in late 📆 2025 after a journey of about 300 days to #2022OB5 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/science/astroforge-launch-asteroid-mining.html
Nearly every ground station 📡 experienced some kind of failure:
• Wrong configuration
• Incorrect pointing coordinates
• An unexpected loss of a power amplifier the day before our launch
• Interference from a recently built cell tower that, although not in our frequency band, created enough noise to disrupt communications
• Insufficient mid-path gain, meaning weak signals were not getting to our radio receiver
https://www.astroforge.com/updates/odint-mission-debrief
#ispace expects to deploy at least five lunar orbiting #satellites 🛰️ by 2030, which will serve as critical infrastructure for the #communications 📶 system.
Critical to the new business will be the development of #GroundStation 📡 services on Earth capable of stably receiving large-capacity communications and data from the #Moon 🌙 https://www.ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=8731
ispace Announces New Business Initiative Involving Commercial Lunar Satellite Services | ispace
Ispace is a private lunar robotic exploration company that is developing micro-robotic technology to provide a low-cost and frequent transportation service to and on the Moon, conduct lunar surface exploration to map, process and deliver resources to our customers in cislunar space.