On February 26, AstroForge will launch their experimental spacecraft Odin on a Falcon 9 rocket. The goal of the company’s mission is a bold one, becoming the first commercially-built craft to navigate far beyond the Moon, with the secondary goal of reaching near-Earth asteroid 2022 OB5. The mission is a stepping stone in the intriguing field of asteroid mining.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mining on Earth is a complicated, messy business with a lot of environmental impact to obtain a small amount of valuable substances – in particular, metals. These metals are also found in asteroids, and possibly in much greater quantities; many have considered saving the environment, lowering costs, and switching one set of complications and challenges for another by going into space to find those precious elements.
There have been many discussions about the legal issues surrounding mining in space. The US unilaterally allows for the commercial extraction of material from celestial bodies, and other countries have followed suit. Nobody has mined an asteroid yet, but this mission might pave the way for such a development.
Odin will launch together with Intuitive Machines’ second mission to the Moon – and while the latter aims to land on the Moon, Odin’s goal is to miss our natural satellite. Everything going well, the mission will perform its lunar flyby five days after launch, and from then into deep space.
Just going to deep space would be history-making for this mission, which went from design to launch in just 10 months. The likelihood of then reaching asteroid 2022 OB5 remains small – but this is a pathfinder mission, so every step of the way will be challenging and exciting.
Asteroid 2022 OB5’s diameter is about 100 meters (330 feet) and it might be metallic. The spacecraft will take roughly 300 days to reach the asteroid and the flyby will be used to analyze the composition of the asteroid.
“Odin’s role is to gather critical imagery of the target asteroid, preparing the way for our next mission, Vestri, which will aim to land on the asteroid and begin extraction,” AstroForge states on their website.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I’m very excited. I’m an investor in [AstroForge], which we believe is at the forefront of trying to commercially mine near-Earth asteroids for platinum group and other exotic metals,” explorer Victor Vescovo told IFLScience.
“If you wonder where we get all these exotic metals from Earth, they come from space. So why don’t we just go to space and get them? And with the cost of accessing space coming down so dramatically with the Starship, with the new Glenn rocket, it’s putting it within reach. So we’re very excited to send out the deepest commercial space probe ever!”
The current launch date and time is February 26 at 7:17 pm EST from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A.
Source Link: The First Private Mission To Deep Space Is About To Launch
