Space Resources Companies

Asteroid Mining Corporation, founded in 2016 and based in London, United Kingdom, is a space-resource company focused on the development of technologies for asteroid prospecting and mining. The company’s core business centers around identifying and accessing valuable resources contained within asteroids. Currently, Asteroid Mining Corporation is concentrating its efforts on developing microsatellite telescopes as a key component of its overall strategy. While specific technological details are limited based on publicly available information, the focus on microsatellite telescopes suggests a capability in space-based observation and remote sensing. This likely involves technologies for asteroid detection, characterization (determining composition and resource potential), and potentially tracking asteroid movements. The development of these telescopes is presumably a precursor to more advanced in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technologies required for actual asteroid mining operations. As a relatively young company with limited public disclosures, details regarding completed missions or established customer bases are currently unavailable. However, the company’s stated focus positions it within the emerging space-resources sector, a field gaining increasing attention from both private investors and government space agencies. Asteroid Mining Corporation’s unique value proposition appears to be its dedication to utilizing microsatellite technology for asteroid resource identification. This approach may offer a cost-effective and scalable solution for initial prospecting compared to larger, more complex orbital or in-situ missions, potentially allowing for quicker identification of viable asteroid targets.

Deep Space Industries (DSI) was a US asteroid mining and spacecraft propulsion company founded in 2013 in San Jose, California. The company proposed a roadmap starting with small prospector spacecraft (Firefly, Dragonfly) to survey and sample near-Earth asteroids, building toward resource extraction for water-derived propellant in cislunar space. DSI's most commercially viable product was its Comet water-electrolysis thruster — a propulsion system using water as propellant (electrolyzing to hydrogen/oxygen) that competed with hydrazine thrusters for small satellites. The company supplied Comet thrusters to commercial satellite operators before being acquired by Bradford Space (Netherlands) in January 2019. Under Bradford, the propulsion line continued while the asteroid mining roadmap was shelved, representing the typical trajectory of 2010s in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) ventures — practical propulsion products survived, speculative mining plans did not.

Interlune

Seattle, United States commercial

Interlune is a Seattle-based company developing technology to extract helium-3 from the lunar regolith and return it to Earth for use in quantum computing, medical imaging (MRI), and potential future fusion energy applications. Founded in 2022 by former astronaut Chris Hadfield's son Evan Hadfield and Rob Meyerson (former president of Blue Origin), the company is backed by investors including Bill Gates and Chris Sacca's Lowercarbon Capital. Helium-3 is extraordinarily rare on Earth but abundant in lunar surface material due to decades of solar wind deposition. Interlune's approach involves robotic extraction and processing of regolith before cryo-shipping the He-3 back to Earth. The company targets the near-term quantum computing and scientific research market before potentially scaling to fusion.

Tauri

San Francisco, United States commercial

Tauri, founded in 2023 and based in San Francisco, is a space technology company focused on the emerging field of space mining. The company is developing technologies to explore, extract, and utilize resources from near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) with the goal of providing a sustainable supply of valuable materials to Earth’s economy. Tauri’s core mission centers around asteroid 1986 DA, estimated to hold over $40 trillion in metals like gold, platinum, nickel, and cobalt. A key component of Tauri’s strategy is the development of the “Tauri Explorer,” a private geological exploration space vehicle. This vehicle will carry a specialized payload – including machine vision systems, radar, and various spectrometers – to the Apophis asteroid in 2024. Data gathered from Apophis will inform the company’s planned sample return and chemical analysis mission to 1986 DA. Tauri is actively building partnerships with both private companies – including Gravisat, Kursorbital, and Beholder Earth – and government agencies, such as those in Saudi Arabia, to support its technology development and initial exploration efforts. The company positions itself as a pioneer in unlocking extraterrestrial resources, potentially offering a cost-effective and abundant supply of critical materials for future technological advancements.

TransAstra Corporation, headquartered in Lake View Terrace, California and founded in 2015 by aerospace engineer Joel Sercel, is a U.S. space resources technology company developing a portfolio of technologies for asteroid mining, in-space propellant production, and space logistics — centered on the Omnivore propulsion system, a novel solar thermal engine that can use almost any volatile material found in space — including water, hydrocarbons, or asteroid regolith outgassed volatiles — as propellant. TransAstra's Omnivore engine concept works by concentrating sunlight using large inflatable solar collectors (typically lightweight gossamer mirror structures) onto a heat exchanger chamber where propellant mass is heated to high temperature and expelled through a nozzle. Unlike chemical rockets that require specific propellant combinations (LOX/LH2, LOX/RP-1), or ion engines that require xenon or krypton, the Omnivore can operate on water (producing hot steam exhaust), ammonia, CO2, or other volatiles — making it theoretically capable of using in-situ resources found at near-Earth asteroids (C-type asteroids are known to contain water and other hydrated minerals) or extracted from lunar polar craters as propellant. This propellant flexibility is the key enabling technology for TransAstra's broader vision: asteroid capture missions that harvest volatiles from the target object and use that very material to fuel the return trip. TransAstra's Worker Bee tug is a prototype spacecraft designed to demonstrate the Omnivore engine in LEO, using concentrated solar thermal propulsion for orbit raising and maneuvering missions. The company has received NASA SBIR Phase II and other early-stage government research contracts to mature the solar thermal propulsion and asteroid capture technologies. TransAstra competes conceptually with AstroForge (which targets metallic asteroids for platinum-group metals), Planetary Resources (now defunct), and ISRU technology developers targeting lunar water ice as a propellant feedstock.

AstroForge

Huntington Beach, United States commercial

AstroForge is an American asteroid mining company targeting platinum group metals (PGMs) — platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium — from near-Earth asteroids. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Huntington Beach, California, the company launched Brokkr-1, a refinery demonstration mission, aboard a SpaceX rideshare in April 2023 to test its asteroid material processing technology in orbit. AstroForge's second mission, Brokkr-2, is an asteroid prospecting spacecraft targeting a specific near-Earth asteroid to characterize its composition before mining operations. The company has raised over $55M from investors including Y Combinator, Map Ventures, and others. Co-founded by Matt Gialich (CEO) and Jose Acain (CTO), both veterans of SpaceX. AstroForge's thesis is that while asteroid mining has failed before (Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries), falling launch costs now make the economics viable.

Kall Morris Inc

Bethlehem, United States commercial

Kall Morris Inc (KMI), headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and founded in 2020, is a lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) company developing manufacturing technologies for the Moon's surface — building toward a future where the Moon's abundant raw materials (regolith, metals, and eventually water ice) are processed on-site into structural components, habitat elements, landing pads, and equipment needed for sustained human presence, rather than launching everything from Earth at enormous cost. KMI's flagship concept is the Lunar Forge — an automated manufacturing system designed to use concentrated solar energy (from large mirror arrays that track the Sun across the lunar sky) to heat and process raw lunar regolith into basalt fiber, sintered regolith bricks, and potentially metallic feedstocks extracted from ilmenite (FeTiO₃) and other iron- and titanium-bearing minerals abundant in Mare basalt regions. Basalt fiber is particularly interesting for lunar manufacturing because it requires no imported chemical processes — the raw material is the regolith itself — and produces a reinforcement fiber comparable in mechanical properties to fiberglass that can be woven into structural composites for habitat shell panels, insulation, and construction materials. KMI participates in NASA's lunar ISRU development ecosystem, competing for and receiving early-stage funding through NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs that fund U.S. companies developing technologies relevant to the Artemis program's long-term lunar infrastructure goals. NASA's 2024 Moon to Mars Architecture calls specifically for ISRU capability as a key enabler of sustainable lunar presence, and KMI positions its Lunar Forge as a critical early infrastructure asset for any permanent base. KMI competes and complements ISRU-focused companies including Masten Space Systems' regolith processing work (now absorbed into Astrobotic), Honeybee Robotics' TRIDENT drill, and Redwire's space manufacturing capabilities.

Origin Space (源星科技) is a Nanjing-based commercial space resources company founded in 2017, operating as China's first and most advanced private asteroid mining startup — pursuing in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) from near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) through a staged technology development roadmap progressing from orbital prospecting to robotic extraction to propellant production. The company's technology demonstration program began with the NEO-1 (Near-Earth Object-1) spacecraft, launched in November 2021 aboard a Long March 6 rocket as a rideshare payload. NEO-1 was a 30-kilogram technology demonstrator carrying experimental asteroid detection sensors — multispectral imagers and a laser rangefinder — designed to validate proximity operations sensing and autonomous navigation algorithms in the orbital environment. While NEO-1 did not fly to an asteroid, it demonstrated key enabling subsystems for future prospecting missions in low Earth orbit conditions. Origin Space's roadmap envisions NEO-2 and subsequent spacecraft conducting actual near-Earth asteroid flybys to characterize composition using spectroscopy (identifying carbon-rich C-type asteroids for volatile water-ice resources versus metallic M-type asteroids for platinum-group metals and nickel-iron), followed by a lander/sampler mission and eventually robotic mining systems. The company focuses on C-type carbonaceous asteroids as priority targets for oxygen and hydrogen extraction (splitting water-ice via electrolysis) to produce propellant usable as on-orbit refueling depots — a more near-term economic case than rare metal extraction, which requires Earth-return logistics currently beyond the company's planned architecture. Origin Space is backed by Chinese venture capital and operates within the regulatory environment created by China's nascent commercial space policy framework. The Chinese government has signaled space resource ownership rights will be addressed in forthcoming legislation, analogous to the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (2015) that granted US companies rights to extracted space resources. Competitors in the asteroid mining sector include AstroForge (California, focused on metallic asteroid refining), TransAstra (NASA contracts for solar-thermal extraction), Karman+ (formerly Deep Space Industries assets), and Planetary Resources' former intellectual property now held by ConsenSys. The entire sector operates on long-time-horizon investment theses requiring decades before resource return economics are demonstrable at commercial scale.

Offworld

Pasadena, United States commercial

Offworld, founded in 2016 and based in Pasadena, California, is a robotics company focused on developing autonomous robotic systems for resource extraction. The company designs and builds rugged, customizable robots intended for use in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial mining operations, specifically targeting hard rock mining. Offworld’s core business centers around providing robotic solutions that improve efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of mining activities. A key differentiator for Offworld is its development of what it terms the “world’s first autonomous laparoscopic mining system,” utilizing advanced controls and artificial intelligence. Their robots are designed for operation in extreme, unstructured environments and are built on a modular platform, allowing for tailored configurations to meet specific project needs. This adaptability is intended to address the growing challenges of resource scarcity and the increasing difficulty of accessing high-quality ore deposits. Offworld currently serves customers in both the Earth-based mining and emerging lunar mining industries, partnering with leaders in both sectors. The company emphasizes a commitment to sustainability, highlighting that their robotic systems are designed to deliver a zero-carbon mining footprint – a significant advantage given the mining industry’s contribution to global carbon emissions. Beyond mining, Offworld is positioning its robotic platform for broader application across industries including public safety, construction, utilities, and infrastructure, demonstrating a versatile approach to autonomous robotics development.