Dawn Aerospace delivers hardware to deep space mining customer

Dawn Aerospace has announced the delivery of an in-space propulsion system to deep space mission customer AstroForge.

California-based start-up AstroForge has ambitions to be the first private company to mine an asteroid in space. The company plans to extract precious platinum group metals from metal-rich asteroids and return them to Earth.

According to Dawn Aerospace, platinum group metals are a finite resource on Earth yet are necessary for a wide range of important technologies. They are used in medical devices such as pacemakers and are a crucial element in some cancer treatments.

They are also used as catalytic converters in cars to reduce harmful emissions by up to 90%, and they’re an essential element in hydrogen fuel cells that will help the world transition to a lower-emission economy.

AstroForge also hopes spacebased mining will reduce the emissions that stem from mining rare earth elements on Earth.

“AstroForge is quickly making progress towards our mission to mine asteroids for Earth’s most depleted and critical resources within this decade,” said AstroForge co-founder and CEO Matt Gialich.

“Earth’s resources are running out and traditional mining practices are destroying our planet. With our second mission, AstroForge will become the first private company to ever operate in deep space.”

While space-based mining may have historically felt like a thing of science fiction, talented teams like AstroForge are making headway in enabling new, space-based technology which has the potential to fundamentally alter the impact of terrestrial mining,” said Dawn Aerospace CEO, Stefan Powell.

Astroforge already has a CubeSat on orbit, the Brokkr-1, proving out their refining technology. The next step is to head into deep space to observe their target asteroid, in preparation for their first retrieval mission. The spacecraft for this mission, Brokkr-2, is being built by UK company OrbAstro with Dawn supplying the propulsion system.

A successful hot fire – an in-lab demonstration of the firings that will happen on-orbit – was completed last

“It’s extremely uncommon in the industry to be able to perform these system tests due to the toxicity of common propellants like hydrazine and ASCENT. Often the first time a propulsion system fires is when it’s needed in space, which is why you see failures such as the recent Lunar Flashlight mission,” Powell said, “These tests give our customers confidence that the system will work when it needs to”.

Dawn’s propulsion systems use nitrous oxide and propylene, a nontoxic, rideshare-friendly combination that gives the high performance required for deep-space missions while removing the handling costs and complexities involved with propellants such as hydrazine.