TransAstra

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.