California startup Astroforge will mine metals on asteroids

Asteroids are not just boulders in space, they are potentially lucrative deposits of precious minerals. The only problem is the way they are mined. The American startup Astroforge will try to solve it, which has already managed attract 13 million investments.

The company's co-founders, formerly of SpaceX, NASA and Virgin Orbit, have patented an innovative mineral purification technique. They plan to use it to produce platinum group metals, including platinum and iridium.

There are few details regarding the technology, but knownthat Astroforge has no plans to land on celestial bodies. For the extraction of resources, asteroids from 20 meters to 1.5 kilometers will be used, and such objects do not even have gravitational fields.

The developers plan to test the secret technology in space early next year. To do this, AstroForge booked a place for their development on the Falcon 9 ship.

They also identified a number of candidate asteroids that are in a suitable orbit and have the right concentration of platinum group metals. And there will be no shortage of asteroids: out of 10 million near-Earth objects, the company is interested in just under a million, the co-founder of Astroforge added.

Several other companies, notably Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, supported by the co-founder Google Larry Page, tried to win mining on asteroids, and each invested and lost millions on it dollars. But despite the high risks and long payback periods, Astroforge wants to succeed where others have failed.