Supply chain was top of mind in the last couple of months, both strategically (what do we purchase and from whom, what do we build/run in house?) as well as tactically (what kind of impact will tariffs have?) for everything from raw materials to finished parts. The tactical stuff is limited in direct impact for now and mostly shows up in increased costs, but we are fairly insulated so far based on the state as of 3 minutes ago...
We were able to move into our new facility much faster than originally planned (March instead of July), which helped us massively in getting everything set up for manufacturing and testing beyond what we would have been able to fit into our old space. We have some more buildout to complete (clean room mostly), but expect to have that all wrapped up in the next couple of weeks.
Odin't
This March saw AstroForge's first mission to a near Earth asteroid. They had scoped a flyby to take photos of an asteroid with their spacecraft called Odin. The title links to their mission debrief, which provides some context about what went wrong and what lessons they have been able to draw from that.
The spacecraft was basically launched on a ballistic trajectory away from Earth without ever connecting with ground stations, which makes real root cause analysis impossible. From the overview AstroForge provided it sounds like a significant portion of the issues stem from insufficient integrated testing with the ground station providers. These companies, who sell antenna access/time by the minute, have some antennas that they own and operate as well as a wide range of partners that all use different equipment and systems.
The main spacecraft on the launch that also carried the AstroForge mission was a lunar lander designed and built by Intuitive Machines. They launched a lander last year which ended up tipping over, at least in part because of faults in their range finding system. Their IM-2 mission sadly ended up on its side as well, with the laser range finder as one of the expected culprits.
On a brighter note, this image from Firefly showing their Blue Ghost lander on the surface of the moon is pretty epic. First attempt, very impressive!
High Frontier Mission Update
Our primary mission objective is:
To rendezvous with an uncharacterized near-Earth Asteroid and showcase capturing regolith at kilogram scale, minimizing mission duration and cost.
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