AstroForge CEO and co-founder Matt Gialich’s “shitload of money” line was a description of what he thinks asteroid mining must eventually deliver—not a report of profits. In a November 2, 2024 Gizmodo interview, he said the company aims to mine platinum-group metals (PGMs) for sale into an existing Earth commodity market. Since then, AstroForge says its first spacecraft, Odin, went beyond the Moon but did not complete all its objectives. The company has not established that it has extracted, returned, or sold asteroid material.
What did AstroForge’s CEO mean by “a shitload of money”?
Gizmodo reporter Passant Rabie asked Gialich whether profit was part of AstroForge’s model. He replied, “You’ve got to make a shitload of money doing this.” He was talking about the scale of the business outcome the company would need: AstroForge’s plan is to target PGMs and sell them into a large Earth commodity market.
The quote is an aspiration and a business thesis, not a financial result or a quantified forecast. The interview did not specify a target revenue, profit, or return for investors. It reported that AstroForge had raised $40 million at that time; that November 2024 figure is historical funding context, not a measure of the company’s current cash, valuation, or performance.
What does AstroForge do, and what has it demonstrated?
AstroForge is developing spacecraft for missions intended to reach metallic asteroids. Its 2024 interview described Odin as an imaging mission, followed by a mission to land and collect a sample. The company’s subsequent updates describe a changed and still-developing mission sequence:
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| Mission | Purpose described by AstroForge | Reported status |
|---|---|---|
| Odin | Image asteroid 2022 OB5. | AstroForge says it launched on February 26, 2025, traveled beyond the Moon, and returned a few signals, but did not achieve all planned objectives. The company reports communication problems, ground-station failures, solar-panel issues, and deployment risk. These are company-reported details, not an independent telemetry assessment. |
| DeepSpace-2 | Rendezvous with and attempt to land on a metallic asteroid. | AstroForge identifies it as the next mission in its current materials. The company’s pages have shown different launch timing, so no single schedule should be treated as settled without checking the latest mission update. |
Odin’s company-reported spacecraft mass is 105 kg. AstroForge’s undated Odin Mission page, accessed October 7, 2026, also gives a $3.5 million build cost. That is a company-reported spacecraft build figure, not an independently audited total cost for the mission. AstroForge’s missions page and Odin communications retrospective provide the company’s account of its progress and difficulties.
Is asteroid mining profitable?
AstroForge’s reasoning is that PGMs already have an Earth market, so a successful operation would not have to wait for a large future space economy to emerge. That may make the intended customer market easier to describe; it does not establish that mining an asteroid can make money.
Profit would depend on more than the value of the metal in the ground. A commercial case would need to establish, among other things, the recoverable concentration of useful material, extraction rate, mission and operating costs across the full journey, and a route to sale. The cited interview and company mission materials do not establish those economics, a customer contract, a completed commodity sale, or realized profit.
AstroForge’s official materials discuss projected margins and lower environmental impact. Those are company projections and claims, not results demonstrated by an operating asteroid mine or an independent lifecycle assessment in the cited material. The company’s June 15, 2026 update describes its ambitions, but does not establish commercial extraction or sales.
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AstroForge says Odin launched on February 26, 2025, with the goal of imaging asteroid 2022 OB5. The company reports that the spacecraft traveled beyond the Moon and sent a few signals, but did not complete all of its planned objectives. Its retrospective attributes the difficulties to communication problems, ground-station failures, solar-panel issues, and deployment risk. That account is the company’s description; the cited sources do not provide an independent analysis of spacecraft telemetry.
Odin’s reported outcome is a spacecraft-mission result, not evidence of asteroid mining. The cited sources do not show that the spacecraft landed, extracted material, returned a sample to Earth, or generated revenue from asteroid resources.
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What is AstroForge’s next mission?
AstroForge currently identifies DeepSpace-2 as its next mission and describes it as an effort to rendezvous with and attempt to land on a metallic asteroid. This is a planned mission objective, not a completed landing or extraction. Because the company’s mission pages have shown different launch timing, readers should use the current mission page for the latest company schedule rather than relying on dates reported in older coverage.
Can companies legally mine asteroids?
In the Gizmodo interview, Gialich referred to the 2015 U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act while discussing ownership and resource rights. Congress.gov’s record for H.R. 2262 confirms that the bill became law in 2015. That fact alone is not a complete account of how the statute applies, the international obligations involved, licensing requirements, or the contested legal questions surrounding space resources. The interview’s shorthand should not be treated as a comprehensive legal opinion.
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