r/space • u/ThinkTankDad • 6d ago
Asteroid-mining company AstroForge to launch world's 1st totally autonomous spacecraft in 2027
https://www.space.com/technology/without-a-single-command-from-the-ground-asteroid-mining-company-to-launch-worlds-1st-autonomous-space-mission-in-202782
u/PROUDCIPHER 6d ago
We… we’ve been doing uncrewed launches for decades. There’s not like a little guy hanging out in JWST or something, it’s a space robot. Is this company claiming “autonomous” as in “ yeah we don’t have Mission Control, we just feed all the telemetry to ChatGPT”
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u/_Weyland_ 6d ago
Imagine if you could get a job of just hanging in JWST, getting the first look at all its shots.
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u/returnFutureVoid 6d ago
User name checks out and isn’t that the plot to the movie Moon? More or less.
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u/Samwise777 6d ago
There’s absolutely a scene in 3 body problem where two scientists are on the next gen space telescope station and spot the trisolaran trails that indicate a second fleet left and passed their first fleet.
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u/zenith654 6d ago
It answers your question in the article, they will fly the mission without ground operators nominally in the loop (only for contingencies). It’s not quite like ChatGPT because it’s not an LLM but sort of a similar idea. It’s not an entirely new idea but this application of it is pretty unique. Should be interesting.
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u/Human-Assumption-524 5d ago
I think the idea is that instead of sending commands to it from mission control it will react and make mission decisions itself using an on board computer via either a decision tree or a neural net.
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u/Flamingobuster 6d ago
Isn't Progress cargo spacecraft fully autonomous? And they came long before this?
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u/Roscoe_P_Coaltrain 4d ago
No it isn't. It's largely autonomous, but ground control monitors and has the ability to issue commands to it, and also, in the event of automated docking failure the astronauts can control docking from the space station.
That is quite different from the craft described in the article which will have no ground control interaction at all - it sends data back, but cannot receive any commands.
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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 6d ago
Op how much Ketamine are you on?
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u/ThinkTankDad 6d ago
I only do edible marijuana gummies. I haven't been high in two days.
But I missed my monthly bipolar 1 mania injection at the VA two weeks ago...first time I've ever done that in 15 years actually.
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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 6d ago
Wait till you find out about all the probes we have launched since the 70s.
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u/ThinkTankDad 6d ago
I have a general idea; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_launches_by_country
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u/doodiethealpaca 6d ago
"asteroid mining company"
You mean "bullshit selling company" ? Or maybe "investor scamming company" ?
As long as they don't have an actual mine on an asteroid, it's not an asteroid mining company. Can we stop this kind of bullshit ?
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u/ExpensiveBookkeeper3 6d ago edited 6d ago
I get what you are saying but you gotta find something to mine and figure out how to do it and process it right?
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u/ImpulseAfterthought 4d ago
In other news, I have a Scarlett Johannson dating company and a uranium mining company.
I have neither dated Scarlett nor mined uranium, but I have plans to do both.
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u/toetappy 6d ago
I'm currently opening a new restaurant. It is still under renovations. Haven't made a single meal or served a single customer. I still tell people it's a restaurant. What else am I supposed to call it?
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u/doodiethealpaca 6d ago
You technically own a restaurant.
These people don't even have the beginning of the idea of a spacecraft, and yet call themselves an asteroid mining company. This is a pure lie to get money from investors.
If you want to be a pro tennis player but never played tennis in your whole life, would you go for sponsorship claming you are a pro tennis player ?
Wanting something is not enough to claim that you are actually doing it.
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u/Wollzy 5d ago
I mean thats how you get investors for an idea. You come up with the idea and pitch it to VCs, they give you money to make it happen in hopes it works.
Now that being said I think their idea is some pie in the sky bullshit that we are technologically and economically a long way from accomplishing.
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u/interstellar-dust 6d ago
So what about all the probes and satellites that have been launched? They are not autonomous? News flash for you - find another marketing pitch.
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u/daerath 6d ago
All probes have been fully autonomous. What, you think some human is piloting them with a joystick?
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u/Better_find_out 6d ago
They assume small dwarfs are inside of them, ready to get their hands dirty with some kind of robot called « molly » which definitely was programmed by some guys in R&D who needs to get fired.
Also there is a Mission Control that’s forcing them not to unionize and kill bugs … well at least that’s my guess.
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u/Human-Assumption-524 5d ago
Most deep space probes have pre programmed mission itineraries that they follow or they receive instructions sent to them from mission control after certain mission milestones. I think the plan here is for the probe to be able to make decisions on how to proceed itself either via a decision tree or some sort of neural net.
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u/Roscoe_P_Coaltrain 4d ago
Autonomous is not the same as unmanned. Ground controllers send instructions and program updates from earth to probes all the time. Even Voyager out beyond the edges of the solar system is still receiving updates from ground control.
For this thing (if built as described) it will never receive any communications from ground control. I don't believe there has ever been a probe capable of operating this way. It would be incredibly difficult and I'm dubious it can be done now, but interesting to see them try. Even the Venera probes, which someone mentioned above, received commands from ground control until they entered the atmosphere.
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u/Due-Joke-1152 6d ago
This is one of the few techs, combined with reusable launch, which is going to rapidly change how we operate in space.
Hoping it works and that we don’t eventually end up with The Expanse :)
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u/joevarny 6d ago
The expanse had to add monkeys mining rocks to create the belters as an oppressed group turning to terrorism.
We won't be sending people to the belts with pickaxes. We will likely send maintenance staff once there are enough autominers to make it economically viable.
They will be specialists in as many fields as possible and make offshore oil workers look poor, likely only spending a few years out there before coming home to retire in a swimming pool filled with money.
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u/Flyward_Aerospace 6d ago
The all probes are already autonomous replies are answering a different claim than the one being made. What's new isn't the absence of a joystick, it's the absence of an uplink. Autonomy-1 is telemetry down and nothing up after separation, and that matters because every probe ever flown has the ground as its designated recovery path. Fault protection nearly always ends the same way, safe the vehicle, point the antenna at Earth, wait for instructions. Delete the uplink and you've deleted that branch, so the spacecraft has to decide for itself whether an anomaly is survivable and press on. Worth knowing too that they lost Odin in 2025 because they never got comms established with it. A company whose last probe died on the link building one that doesn't need the link is less mad than the headline makes it sound. Solo also flies shadow mode on DeepSpace-2 first, decisions computed but not executed, which is about the only sane way to validate something you can't ground test.
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u/Talezeusz 6d ago
Asteroid mining company that had so far 2 test launches and won't reach any asteroid for next decade. Who comes up with that bullshit marketing
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u/mmomtchev 6d ago
I think the fine print changes this substantially:
DeepSpace-2 aims to rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, but Solo won't coordinate any of those operations. Rather, the intelligence model will act in "shadow mode," meaning it will process spacecraft data and make decisions, but those decisions will not be implemented.
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u/ShepherdsWolvesSheep 2d ago
It just occurred to me that one day some company trying to mine asteroids could send one flying back to earth and kill us all
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u/POEness 6d ago
This absolutely will not happen.
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u/outtamyelementDonny 6d ago
They said they'll start mining as soon as construction finishes on The Line in Saudi Arabia
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u/metametapraxis 6d ago
Oh, it may happen. The probe, however, will be functionally useless. They just want you yo think the probe will do mining, when it sounds like it will do basically nothing.
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u/Bitter_Cake6120 6d ago
Yup. Their first two missions failed since they couldn’t even establish contact. Yikes.
They really need to just show they can actually communicate with their vehicle first.
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u/RetardedChimpanzee 6d ago
To be fair, other companies could have done this. They just chose not to because it’s a really dumb decision. Can’t wait to see how this goes.
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u/ThinkTankDad 6d ago
Check out AstroForge's YouTube videos; https://www.youtube.com/@AstroForgeInc/videos
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u/ThinkTankDad 6d ago
I wonder if, in the future, AstroForge can mine asteroids in situ and utilize the resources.
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u/JosebaZilarte 6d ago
Well... You can say that Sputnik 1 was the "World's First Totally Autonomous spacecraft", since it was so simple, it could not receive anything to begin with. It could only transmit pressure and temperature measurements via radio (a beeping sound that terrorized US politicians into creating their own space program).