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A Long Beach aerospace firm is betting on a new industrial boom: capturing asteroids
The one-way spacecraft will carry payloads from customers and agencies to measure the asteroid’s composition and origin.
- ExLabs is developing a spacecraft to launch in April 2028, targeting the asteroid Apophis as it passes within about 32,000 kilometers of Earth on April 13, 2029.
- James Orsulak, co-founder of ExLabs and former Planetary Resources member, leads the effort to understand asteroid internal structures as it passes through Earth's gravity field, calling it a unique moment in human history.
- Funding comes from U.S. Space Force, Air Force, NASA, and JPL contracts. Operating from a 30,000-square-foot warehouse, ExLabs' dozen employees design autonomous spacecraft to launch payloads studying the asteroid's composition and origin.
- Co-Founder and chief finance officer Freyr Thor explained that partners pay to send "payloads" to collect data during operations. The company hopes this provides a model for a burgeoning industry of capturing and mining asteroids.
- Orsulak believes accessing infinite space resources could eventually end mining on Earth. While Apophis contains nickel and rock, about 41,000 known near-Earth asteroids may hold valuable materials like cobalt, gallium, platinum, and chromium.
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Associated Press News+8 Reposted by 8 other sources
A Long Beach aerospace firm is betting on a new industrial boom: capturing asteroids
It’s like shooting a bullet with another bullet. Except the two — one the size of a trailer and the other as tall as the Empire State Building — are thousands of miles apart and moving at 7,000 miles an hour.
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Total News Sources9
Leaning Left4Leaning Right0Center5Last UpdatedBias Distribution56% Center
Bias Distribution
- 56% of the sources are Center
56% Center
L 44%
C 56%
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