Spacecraft Is Out Of Contact And Presumably Tumbling In Space

Attempts to re-establish contact with AstroForge’s Odin asteroid mining were not successful last night. Astroforge co-founder and CEO Matt Gialich said in an update on the status of the mission that, “There is still a chance that we are going to be able to recover the vehicle… but I think we all know that hope is fading.”

AstroForge Now Believes Odin Is Tumbling

A clearly exhausted Gialich said in the update, “Last night we had two options. One of those options was that [Odin] was tumbling. And I think that is the option that has become true as we have got additional data.”

That’s a change from yesterday, when AstroForge mission controllers did not think Odin was in a tumbling state. More data or further analysis of all the data available can change informed opinions, of course, and that’s what appears to be the case with AstroForge.

“When I say tumble,” Gialich explained, “this is a really, really low speed tumble. We think this is somewhere sub one-degree. And we have some optical data to calculate that.”

He then added that, “In short, we don’t know why and that’s going to be the problem going forward now.” It seemed clear in Gialich’s statement that he was not only speaking towards recovering Odin’s mission but also future AstroForge spacecraft. “We’re gonna keep our head up, we’re gonna keep trying over the weekend and we’ll see how far we get.”

AstroForge Promises Detailed Summary Of Events Next Week

Gialich and AstroForge have been extremely open and transparent throughout the Odin mission and from the start. Gialich promised more information will be coming soon, warts and all, regarding the Odin mission. “I’ll follow this up with a really detailed blog post,” he said last night. “I’m gonna tell you guys everything: all the errors we made, all the issues we had, all the problems we had, everything that went wrong.”

He added, “I think as a team and as a company and I think as humans, that’s how we get better at these missions. Right? And our hope is that in the future we can open up space to everybody. We don’t do that by being closed minded. So we’ll publish that.”

As to when that update would be coming, Gialich said, “I think the first iteration of that we’ll put up in a couple hours and then followed up in the middle of the week by, I think, a very detailed one and some of the learnings that will go into our next mission.”

AstroForge Will Try Again In A Year

Despite the apparent failure of their second mission, Matt Gialich seemed upbeat in spite of his disappointment, “We have probably the best group of investors in the world. [A] lot of them have doubled down on this company. We have more than enough capital to make it to the next mission. So regardless of the outcome of Odin, regardless if we ever talk to it again or we don’t, we’re going to roll these findings into the next mission.

He concluded by saying, “We’ll see you back here in about a year when we take another stab at it.”