A US-based private aerospace company is aiming to commercially mine an asteroid later this week using a microwave-sized robotic spacecraft named Odin, according to a report Sunday.
According to The New York Times, AstroForge in California has already launched a demonstration spacecraft into Earth’s orbit, recently raised $55 million in funding, and is now preparing to target football-size near-Earth Asteroid 2022 OB5.
T-3 days till launch!
But we are already working on the next mission. This is one set of solar panels.
Vestri is way to power hungry. When are those SMR’s ready? pic.twitter.com/NrXqnXgNMi
— AstroForge (@astroforge) February 23, 2025
“If this works out, this will probably be the biggest business ever conceived of,” Matt Gialich, founder and CEO, AstroForge, the builder and operator of the robotic probe, was quoted as saying by The New York Times Sunday.
Odin is AstroForge’s second spacecraft and will be carried into space by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than February 26, along with a privately built moon lander and a lunar orbiter, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Odin will separate from the Falcon 9 after 45 minutes of flight time, beginning its solo journey. The spacecraft’s mission is to capture images of Asteroid 2022 OB5 using black-and-white cameras from a distance of 0.6 miles. These images will help measure the asteroid’s density and metallic content. The asteroid, classified as an M-type, is believed to contain up to 117,000 tons of platinum.
The cost of the Odin spacecraft is estimated at $6.5 million, and AstroForge is already planning its third asteroid mission, possibly by late 2025 or early 2026 with an aim to land on an asteroid for extraction. According to space.com, AstroForge’s first mission, Brokkr-1, reached orbit in April 2023 but could not activate the cubesat’s prototype refinery technology.
“A single 1-kilometre-diameter asteroid, if it were 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,” Mitch Hunter-Scullion, founder and CEO, Asteroid Mining Corp in Britain, told The New York Times.
The overall mission is expected to last over 300 days before Odin returns to Earth with images that could finally determine whether the asteroid is indeed metallic.
