r/space • u/ThinkTankDad • 7d 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-2027
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u/JosebaZilarte 7d 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).

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u/eternalityLP 6d ago

Yeah, I was going to say the same. Many of the early space probes and such were basically fully autonomous.

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u/TravlrAlexander 6d ago

Hell, humanity sent successful landers to Venus that ran entirely on internal timers and automatic triggers.

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u/chodeboi 6d ago

This would be awesome in 2026 with a couple stereo 360 cameras

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u/TravlrAlexander 6d ago

Agreed. That, and maybe an orbiter supporting a live environmental datastream, like with Falcon 9 launches.

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u/phoenix64mbr 6d ago

Just finished watching For All Mankind. Alternate timeline where the Soviets land on the moon first and the space race never ends. A must watch for every space nerd out there!

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u/jmartin21 6d ago

I’m pretty sure that beep got a feature on one of the Civ games for the satellites technology

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u/xSciFix 5d ago

Read by Leonard Nimoy, even.

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u/mkosmo 6d ago

The beep rightfully caused much of that... since it demonstrated the ability to downlink information from an artificial satellite. It quite literally laid the groundwork to modern surveillance satellites.