Communications issues dogging the company’s inaugural launch

AstroForge, the California-based company developing asteroid mining technologies, is having trouble locking on and establishing reliable communications with its Odin spacecraft after its February 26th launch from Kennedy Space Center. Communications from spacecraft to the ground have thus far been intermittent, with no meaningful data telemetry being received from Odin back on Earth.

AstroForge Co-Founder and CEO Matt Gialich said in a briefing earlier today, “We have made multiple communications with the spacecraft. We do believe we’re in a power positive state, although we don’t have telemetry coming down to confirm that. There’s no known way to actually have the vehicle communicating with us at this point in the mission and not be in a power positive state.”

“Power positive” is indicative of a successful deployment of Odin’s solar panels, and that those panels are providing power to the spacecraft to operate. Taken at its simplest terms, AstroForge knows that Odin is not dead because of the intermittent information received thus far.

On Its Way To Deep Space

Secondly, AstroForge knows that they are on course to exit cislunar space. “The vehicle is almost exactly where we predicted it would be. And we do have information and updated locations to show it is very close to where [it is] predicted [to be], which allows it to track us with the high gain antennas that we are going to be using.”

“We have what’s called the C3 greater than zero, which means we are on our way to deep space. We will be in deep space or we’ll be on the other side of the moon in about two days.”

Two Possibilities

AstroForge believes that the issues come down to one of two possibilities: “Possibility number one is everything is fine and all our issues are actually on the ground,” Gialich said. “Possibility number two is that we are in a really slow uncontrolled tumble. We actually got some information [earlier] that suggests that that is not true.”

Good news that, and AstroForge’s team has a plan going forward. Sometime this evening, the company’s mission controllers are planning to send two commands to Odin. “The first command is going to be turning on our power amplifier. This is the thing on the spacecraft that actually sends a really high gain signal back to Earth. We’re going to [send] a command up,” Gialich explained. “We’ll send it about once every half a second. That is going to try to turn this on from the flight computer.”

He added that, “We have every inclination to believe the flight computer is on. And if we can get this command to it, it will be received and turned on. There is a second special command that we will put in place, probably an hour to two hours if that command doesn’t work. And this is a command that will turn on the power amplifier via the radio.”

“So we’ll never communicate with the flight computer. We’ll have the radio turn on the power amplifier and turn back down to us. Those are the two commands we’ll be trying tonight with the whole intent of getting more data from the spacecraft so we can make sure its state is in a good place,” Gialich concluded.

Ground Station Issues

“We dealt with a [lot] of ground issues very early. The first station we had there was a lot of mistakes made by the provider,” Gialich said.

“We actually didn’t even start to communicate with the spacecraft until about an hour after launch, which was not ideal because that was a much smaller dish. So we made a lot of mistakes there. That sucked. But essentially that whole 10 hour pass that we first had was just useless.”

“One of our power amplifiers on one of our stations literally broke. I don’t even know how you make this [stuff] up. Like it broke during, right before [it was needed]. And that was one of our major communication points,” a clearly frustrated Matt Gialich said.

On top of that bad luck, one of AstroForge’s deep space communications providers in India has been experiencing interference from a nearby cellphone tower. “The theory actually what happened is somebody installed the cell phone antenna and turned it on, Gialich said, adding “You gotta love the world sometimes. There was nothing we could do about it.”

For tonight’s communications attempt, according to Gialich that cellphone tower will either be shut down or will operate with greatly reduced power. In the meantime, Astroforge will be attempting to track the Intuitive Machines IM-2 lander as it travels towards the moon in order to verify their communications setup on the ground.

Contingency Plans

In about six and a half days, if Odin remains out of communication, it will automatically execute a pre-planned burn designed to send the spacecraft towards its target asteroid.

“The challenge here becomes if there’s anything that is really, even in the predicted margins here, it’s really hard to track the spacecraft,” Gialich explains. He added that Odin “Is very far away from Earth at this point. And to try to point one of these high gain thin-beam width antennas at the spacecraft and get it right, it’s gonna be really difficult. So not an ideal situation that we want to get to whatsoever.”

Gialich concluded the briefing sating, “We got a long night ahead of us of trying to command this thing and trying to figure out what we can do. It’ll be a lot of of going back and forth. It’ll be a lot of not sleeping for me and the team again. And welcome to Space.”

Indeed. Space is a harsh mistress, and is unforgiving of even the smallest error. While AstroForge has already made some history by being the first deep-space commercial probe, the company is working diligently to restore communications and to get Odin’s mission back on track.

Stay Tuned.

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You can follow AstroForge’s mission updates on their X.com account. The company is remarkably transparent and entirely human, and it is refreshing to see them showing all aspects of their mission, good and bad.