Karman+ raises $20 million for asteroid mining spacecraft

US asteroid mining startup Karman+ has raised $20 million to develop autonomous spacecraft that can fly to asteroids and extract their resources.

Start – already in 2027

According  to  Karman+, the $20 million raised in their seed round of investment will go toward developing autonomous spacecraft capable of traveling to asteroids, extracting resources, and returning them to Earth.

The company hopes that the first demonstration and commercial missions could begin as early as 2027.

Autonomous asteroid mining

According to Karman+, its goal is to extract space resources from near-Earth asteroids, thereby ensuring abundant, sustainable sources of energy and resources both in space and on Earth.

The company hopes to capitalize on the growth of the space industry, which is projected to become a multi-trillion dollar economy by 2035.

Experts believe that the main drivers of this development will be space-based or space-based solutions such as communications, positioning, navigation, timing, and Earth observation services. 

Karman+ predicts that these technologies will also encompass exploration, research, and manufacturing in the future, as more and more activities will be carried out in space.

In addition, several missions have already been completed that demonstrate the feasibility of transporting materials from asteroids, including JAXA's Hayabusa 1 and Hayabusa 2 and NASA's OSIRIS-REx. 

But these missions have come at a huge cost. For example, the OSIRIS-REx mission cost more than $1.3 billion to return just 121 grams of material to Earth. That works out to about $10.7 billion per kilogram.

Karman+ aims to solve this problem by developing scalable and cost-effective autonomous asteroid mining that would reduce costs and ensure the supply of resources to customers on large-scale orders.

Target – regolith layer

One of the main goals of Karman+ is to extract a layer of regolith (a coating of unconsolidated dust, crushed rock, and other materials that covers solid rock) from near-Earth asteroids.

Also, extract water from asteroids to be used for in-orbit refueling or to be split into hydrogen and oxygen, thus reducing the need for fuel supplies from Earth.

This would make in-orbit refueling of satellites up to 10 times cheaper and would enable deep space missions.

To this end, Karman+ is developing autonomous technologies: optical navigation for interplanetary travel, asteroid mapping, and special equipment for mining regolith in zero-gravity conditions. 

The team is also using a COTS+ approach, which allows the use and adaptation of components already existing in the industry, reducing the mission budget to $10 million.

Karman+ CEO Teun van den Dries emphasizes that within two years the company plans to create infrastructure that will allow it to convert asteroid resources into rocket fuel for the space economy.