{"id":22684,"date":"2025-02-23T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22684"},"modified":"2025-02-23T10:25:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T10:25:51","slug":"earths-1st-asteroid-mining-prospector-heads-to-the-launchpad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22684","title":{"rendered":"Earth\u2019s 1st Asteroid Mining Prospector Heads to the Launchpad"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The dream of mining metals in deep space crashed and burned in the 2010s. AstroForge\u2019s Odin mission to survey a potentially metallic asteroid is packed and ready to lift off.<\/p>\n

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A private company is aiming to heave a microwave oven-size spacecraft toward an asteroid later this week, its goal to kick off a future where precious metals are mined around the solar system to create vast fortunes on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this works out, this will probably be the biggest business ever conceived of,\u201d said Matt Gialich, the founder and chief executive of AstroForge, the builder and operator of the robotic probe.<\/p>\n

That may sound familiar: A decade ago, news stories were aflutter about the wealth promised by asteroid mining companies. But things didn\u2019t quite work out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe blossomed three or four years too early for the big gold rush of investor enthusiasm for space projects,\u201d said David Gump, the former chief executive of Deep Space Industries, one of the earlier batch of would-be asteroid miners<\/a>. Eventually the money dried up; Deep Space Industries was sold off in 2019 and never reached an asteroid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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AstroForge is betting on things being different this time around. The California company has already launched a demonstration spacecraft into Earth orbit and raised $55 million<\/a> in funding. Now the company is set to actually travel toward a near-Earth asteroid in deep space.<\/p>\n

AstroForge\u2019s second robotic spacecraft, called Odin, is bundled into a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will also launch a privately built moon lander and a NASA-operated lunar orbiter as soon as Wednesday from Florida. About 45 minutes after the launch, Odin will separate and begin its solo journey into deep space, while the moon missions \u2014 the Athena lander from Intuitive Machines<\/a> and NASA\u2019s Lunar Trailblazer \u2014 take off on their own separate journeys.<\/p>\n

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The dream of mining metals in deep space crashed and burned in the 2010s. AstroForge\u2019s Odin mission to survey a potentially metallic asteroid is packed and ready to lift off.A private company is aiming to heave a microwave oven-size spacecraft toward an asteroid later this week, its goal to kick off a future where precious metals are mined around the solar system to create vast fortunes on Earth.\u201cIf this works out, this will probably be the biggest business ever conceived of,\u201d said Matt Gialich, the founder and chief executive of AstroForge, the builder and operator of the robotic probe.That may sound familiar: A decade ago, news stories were aflutter about the wealth promised by asteroid mining companies. But things didn\u2019t quite work out.\u201cWe blossomed three or four years too early for the big gold rush of investor enthusiasm for space projects,\u201d said David Gump, the former chief executive of Deep Space Industries, one of the earlier batch of would-be asteroid miners. Eventually the money dried up; Deep Space Industries was sold off in 2019 and never reached an asteroid.AstroForge is betting on things being different this time around. The California company has already launched a demonstration spacecraft into Earth orbit and raised $55 million in funding. Now the company is set to actually travel toward a near-Earth asteroid in deep space.AstroForge\u2019s second robotic spacecraft, called Odin, is bundled into a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will also launch a privately built moon lander and a NASA-operated lunar orbiter as soon as Wednesday from Florida. About 45 minutes after the launch, Odin will separate and begin its solo journey into deep space, while the moon missions \u2014 the Athena lander from Intuitive Machines and NASA\u2019s Lunar Trailblazer \u2014 take off on their own separate journeys.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22686,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22687,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22684\/revisions\/22687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}