Eight commercial ventures currently pursue asteroid resources, lunar materials, or in-space propellant infrastructure. None of them has extracted or returned a commercial resource to date. The sector has shifted from early speculative concepts toward hardware demonstrations funded by private seed rounds and agency contracts.
The two best-known early commercial pioneers, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, no longer exist as independent mining companies. Planetary Resources was acquired by ConsenSys in 2018 after failing to close a funding round; Bradford Space acquired Deep Space Industries in 2019 on undisclosed terms. Today, the field divides between ventures targeting deep-space asteroids for metals or water, and lunar exploration companies sustained by government exploration awards.
Asteroid Mining Companies Compared at a Glance
The commercial resource sector spans asteroid prospectors, lunar extractors, and in-space propellant depots. Pure-play asteroid extraction remains entirely private, while lunar lander developers have tapped public equity markets.
| Company | HQ | Founded | Target body | Target resource | Missions flown or planned (dated) | Funding as reported | Public or private |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AstroForge | Seal Beach, California | 2022 (January) | Near-Earth asteroids | Platinum-group metals | Brokkr-1 (2023), Odin (2025), DeepSpace-2 (planned Q4 2026) | $55 million ($13M seed, $40M Series A) | Private |
| TransAstra | Los Angeles, California | 2015 | Near-Earth asteroids | Asteroid capture and relocation | Capture Bag ISS test (Sept 2025); New Moon mission (rendezvous 2028 or 2029) | $5 million ($2.5M NASA CCRPP plus $2.5M matching private capital); equity rounds not disclosed | Private |
| Karman+ | Denver, Colorado | not published | Near-Earth asteroids | Water from regolith (for propellant) | High Frontier demonstration (planned 2027) | $20 million (seed round) | Private |
| Asteroid Mining Corporation | London, United Kingdom | 2016 | Asteroids and the Moon | Exploration robotics | SCAR-E lunar demo with ispace (no date); no missions flown | Pre-seed from E2IN2 S.A. (2021); Series A amount not disclosed | Private |
| Interlune | Seattle, Washington | 2020 | Moon | Helium-3 | Regolith gas extraction demo (planned 2028) | $18 million seed; $6.9 million NASA SBIR Phase III | Private |
| ispace | Tokyo, Japan | 2010 (September) | Moon | Lunar regolith; commercial delivery | Mission 1 (2023), Mission 2 (2025), Mission 3 (planned 2028), Mission 4 (planned 2029) | ¥6.7 billion (around $52 million) in April 2023 Tokyo IPO; two $5,000 NASA contracts | Public (TSE Growth: 9348) |
| Lunar Outpost | Golden, Colorado | 2017 | Moon | Lunar regolith; surface mobility | MAPP on IM-2 (2025); Pegasus rover (planned 2028); Eagle rover (planned 2029) | Series A undisclosed (Oct 2024); $220M NASA LTV award; $1 NASA regolith contract | Private |
| Orbit Fab | Lafayette, Colorado | 2018 (January) | Earth orbit (depots) | Hydrazine and in-space propellant delivery | Furphy (2018), Tenzing (2021), Podracer (March 2026); Kamino and Mynock (Q2 2027); Rancor (2028) | $28.5 million Series A; $21 million across three U.S. Defense Department contracts | Private |
For an overview of legal frameworks, resource distribution, and physics constraints across the industry, read our space mining explainer.
Active Commercial Resource Developers
Commercial firms in this sector vary widely by operational focus, technical architecture, and capital structure. The following profiles outline the verified milestones, funding rounds, and vehicle deployments for active ventures.
AstroForge
Founded in January 2022 by Matt Gialich and Jose Acain, AstroForge pursues the extraction and refining of platinum-group metals from near-Earth M-type asteroids. The founding date is recorded as January 2022 by TechCrunch, though the Y Combinator directory lists the company under its Winter 2022 batch with a 2021 founding year. AstroForge is based in a 64,000-square-foot facility in Seal Beach, California, which the company announced in September 2024 following an earlier base in Huntington Beach.
AstroForge announced a $13 million seed round on May 26, 2022, led by Initialized Capital with participation from Seven Seven Six, EarthRise, Aera VC, Liquid 2, and Soma. On August 20 to 21, 2024, SpaceNews and Payload reported that AstroForge raised a $40 million Series A round led by Nova Threshold, bringing total reported funding to $55 million.
The company has conducted two flight missions and prepared a third:
- Brokkr-1: A 6U CubeSat launched April 15, 2023, on the SpaceX Transporter-7 rideshare. Its miniature refinery payload never activated in orbit, and final communications ceased on May 16, 2024.
- Odin: A roughly 100-kilogram deep-space probe launched February 26, 2025, on the IM-2 Falcon 9 rideshare mission. AstroForge reported losing the spacecraft following a communications failure, noting a vehicle cost of approximately $3.5 million.
- DeepSpace-2: A 200-kilogram deep-space explorer. AstroForge announced assembly completion on June 3, 2026, targeting a fourth-quarter 2026 launch on the IM-3 rideshare to rendezvous with an M-type asteroid.
The lunar lander carrying AstroForge payloads is built by Intuitive Machines, covered in our guide to researching Intuitive Machines stock.
TransAstra
TransAstra was established in 2015 by founder and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Joel Sercel and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company develops technologies for orbital logistics, orbital debris remediation, and asteroid harvesting, centered on deployable capture enclosures.
On September 23, 2025, TransAstra announced securing a $2.5 million NASA Civil Commercial Research and Products Program (CCRPP) contract, matched by $2.5 million in private financing. The $5 million capital deployment was committed to scaling its inflatable Capture Bag architecture from a 1-meter to a 10-meter diameter. TransAstra has not publicly disclosed the values or participants of its private equity funding rounds.
TransAstra delivered a 1-meter Capture Bag test article to the International Space Station during the week of September 29, 2025, for an exterior-airlock vacuum deployment test. Through its “New Moon” research study conducted alongside the University of Central Florida, Purdue University, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, TransAstra is evaluating mission architectures to capture an approximately 100-ton near-Earth asteroid and relocate it into an orbit near Earth. The company has stated an initial capture mission could fly this decade, targeting an asteroid rendezvous in 2028 or 2029.
Karman+
Karman+ focuses on harvesting water from regolith on near-Earth asteroids to supply in-space propellant markets. Based in Denver, Colorado, the company was co-founded by CEO Teun van den Dries (previously co-founder of GeoPhy, acquired for $290 million in 2022) and Mission Architect Daynan Crull. Its exact founding year has not been stated in primary corporate releases.
On February 19, 2025, Karman+ announced a $20 million seed funding round co-led by Plural and Hummingbird Ventures, with backing from HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey, angel investors, and van den Dries.
The company aims to extract water from near-Earth asteroids and crack it into hydrogen and oxygen propellants. This fuel would serve orbital transfer vehicles operating near geostationary orbits. Karman+ plans to launch its initial “High Frontier” technology demonstration mission in 2027 under an estimated budget cap of $10 million.
Asteroid Mining Corporation
Asteroid Mining Corporation Ltd was founded in 2016 by CEO Mitch Hunter-Scullion. The business maintains its corporate headquarters in the Canary Wharf district of London, United Kingdom. It carries out robotic development via a research partnership with Tohoku University’s Space Robotics Laboratory in Sendai, Japan.
The company develops SCAR-E (Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorers), a six-legged walking and climbing robot engineered for rough-surface locomotion on asteroids, lunar terrain, and external spacecraft structures. In February 2023, Asteroid Mining Corporation announced the formation of a United States operating subsidiary and opened a Series A funding round, leaving the target figure undisclosed.
AMC received an undisclosed pre-seed investment from E2IN2 S.A. in October 2021. It has flown no space missions to date. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with lunar lander developer ispace to deliver a SCAR-E unit to the surface of the Moon as a technology demonstration payload, though neither partner has announced a mission date.
Interlune
Interlune was founded in 2020 in Seattle, Washington, by former Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, alongside Chief Scientist Dr. Elizabeth Frank. The company focuses on extracting helium-3 and other resources from lunar regolith to supply industrial markets on Earth.
Interlune has raised $18 million in seed equity capital, including a $15 million funding round led by Seven Seven Six. On May 4, 2026, NASA awarded the startup a $6.9 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III contract via the Space Technology Mission Directorate. The award finances development of a regolith gas-processing demonstration payload scheduled to fly on a lunar lander mission in 2028.
On May 7, 2025, the United States Department of Energy Isotope Program agreed to purchase three liters of lunar-derived helium-3 from Interlune, with delivery scheduled no later than April 2029. Interlune has reported holding nearly $500 million in commercial purchase commitments, which the company describes as binding and which include quantum-computing customers.
Japan’s ispace
Founded on September 10, 2010, by CEO Takeshi Hakamada, ispace is a Tokyo-based lunar logistics company that develops commercial robotic lunar landers. In April 2023, ispace completed an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market under securities code 9348, raising approximately ¥6.7 billion (about $52 million) at an issue price of ¥254 per share.
ispace has conducted two lunar landing attempts:
- Mission 1 (HAKUTO-R): Reached the Moon on April 25, 2023, but hard-landed after what ispace described as a propellant-related rapid descent.
- Mission 2 (Resilience): Impacted the lunar surface on June 5, 2025, caused by a laser range finder navigation anomaly during descent.
Under its updated “ULTRA” lander architecture announced on March 27, 2026, ispace scheduled its Mission 3 for 2028 and Mission 4 for 2029. In December 2020, NASA selected both ispace Japan and ispace Europe for separate $5,000 contracts to collect lunar regolith and formally transfer legal ownership of the material to the agency while on the lunar surface.
Lunar Outpost
Established in 2017 by Justin Cyrus, Julian Cyrus, AJ Gemer, and Forrest Meyen, Lunar Outpost is an autonomous robotics developer located in Golden, Colorado. In October 2024, the enterprise closed an undisclosed Series A equity round. On November 21, 2024, TechCrunch reported that Lunar Outpost signed a commercial contract with SpaceX to deliver its Eagle rover to the lunar surface aboard a Starship lunar lander mission by 2029.
Lunar Outpost deployed its Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover on the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission on February 26, 2025. The Intuitive Machines lander came to rest on its side on the surface and could not deploy the rover.
In December 2020, NASA awarded Lunar Outpost a token $1 contract to collect lunar regolith and transfer legal ownership to the agency. On May 26, 2026, NASA selected Lunar Outpost for a $220 million Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services task award to build and deliver its Pegasus rover to the lunar surface by 2028.
Orbit Fab
Orbit Fab was founded in January 2018 by Daniel Faber and Jeremy Schiel, who previously worked together at Deep Space Industries. Headquartered in Lafayette, Colorado, Orbit Fab develops orbital propellant depots and satellite refueling interfaces, creating the customer base necessary for space-derived propellants to find commercial demand.
Orbit Fab announced a $28.5 million Series A round on April 17, 2023, led by 8090 Industries alongside Stride Capital, Industrious Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Tribe Capital, Good Growth Capital, and Massive Capital Partners. It has also received $21 million across three defense contracts from the United States Department of Defense.
Orbit Fab has placed three hardware units into orbit:
- Furphy: A test on the International Space Station, launched December 4, 2018, and completed May 19, 2019.
- Tanker-001 Tenzing: A depot launched June 30, 2021, still on orbit.
- Podracer: Launched March 2026, on orbit.
Orbit Fab plans to deploy the Kamino depot near geostationary orbit and demonstrate hydrazine refueling alongside Astroscale U.S. during the second quarter of 2027, followed by the Rancor depot mission with Northrop Grumman in 2028. The company publicly offers in-space hydrazine delivery at a price of $20 million for up to 100 kilograms.
AstroForge’s funding rounds and each mission’s outcome are detailed in our AstroForge profile.
What Happened to Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries
The two best-known early companies were formed in 2009 and 2013 and were gone as independent miners by 2019.
Planetary Resources was formed on January 1, 2009, in Redmond, Washington, under the initial name Arkyd Astronautics. Founded by Peter Diamandis, Eric C. Anderson, and Chris Lewicki, the firm received a €25 million direct investment from the government of Luxembourg in November 2016. The company launched the Arkyd-3 Reflight test satellite from the International Space Station on July 16, 2015, followed by the Arkyd-6 remote-sensing CubeSat on January 12, 2018.
Planetary Resources ran short of capital after failing to close a planned funding round in 2018. On October 31, 2018, blockchain software company ConsenSys acquired Planetary Resources in an asset-purchase deal for an undisclosed sum, bringing Lewicki and general counsel Brian Israel onto its payroll. ConsenSys subsequently released Planetary Resources’ intellectual property into the public domain in May 2020 and auctioned off its remaining physical laboratory equipment and hardware in June 2020.
Deep Space Industries was founded on January 22, 2013, by a group including Rick Tumlinson and Daniel Faber, setting up operations in San Jose, California. Deep Space Industries developed small-satellite propulsion systems, including the “Comet” electrothermal thruster that operated on water propellant, alongside the Xplorer deep-space bus architecture.
On January 1, 2019, Bradford Space acquired Deep Space Industries for an undisclosed purchase price. Bradford framed Comet as complementary to its ECAPS thrusters, and Comet production continued in Luxembourg. Deep Space Industries ceased operations as an independent asteroid mining venture.
Target Bodies, Resources, and Near-Term Revenue
The modern resource field splits along technical and operational lines: target body, resource classification, and revenue timelines. At OrbitalIntel, we sort these ventures by what they have actually flown and who is paying them today, not by their mission concepts.
Companies focused on asteroids, such as AstroForge and Karman+, target resources for distinct economic use cases. AstroForge targets platinum-group metals on metallic M-type asteroids. Karman+ targets water in asteroid regolith, to be split into hydrogen and oxygen for refueling space tugs that serve satellites in geostationary orbit. TransAstra’s stated work is capturing and relocating a small asteroid whole.
In contrast, lunar ventures focus heavily on non-metal resources or logistics:
- Helium-3: Interlune plans to extract helium-3 from lunar regolith; its announced buyers are the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program and quantum-computing companies.
- Surface Mobility and Agency Delivery: Lunar Outpost and ispace monetize government lunar exploration budgets directly. These companies win contracts like NASA’s $220 million Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services program or token regolith extraction awards.
The money today is in lunar delivery: Lunar Outpost’s $220 million NASA rover award and ispace’s Tokyo listing are the largest funding events on this list, while the asteroid ventures run on seed and Series A rounds plus TransAstra’s $2.5 million NASA award.
How venture capital flows into the sector, and how to read market-size claims, is covered in our guide to investing in the space economy.
Investment Realities and Public Equity Access
Every pure-play asteroid mining company operating today is a private enterprise. Individual retail investors cannot purchase shares of AstroForge, Karman+, TransAstra, or Asteroid Mining Corporation on public exchanges. For private companies that have not held an initial public offering, private secondary markets remain restricted to accredited investors and institutional venture funds, a dynamic discussed in our analysis of investing in Varda Space Industries.
Public equity access in commercial space resources is limited to two indirect routes:
- Foreign Listed Operators: ispace trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market (code 9348). Its business is lunar lander delivery, not mining.
- Mission Rideshare and Service Partners: Investors seeking exposure to lunar and deep-space missions often evaluate publicly listed prime contractors and delivery partners. Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) builds the landers contracted to transport payloads for both AstroForge and Lunar Outpost.
The listed companies with a documented resource link, and the ETFs that hold them, are mapped in our guide to space mining stocks; broader categories are in our space stock categories overview.
Who Should Not Invest in Early Mining Startups
Retail investors looking for predictable earnings, dividend yields, or traditional price-to-earnings multiples should avoid early space resource firms. Pure-play asteroid prospectors consume tens of millions of dollars in capital testing unproven propulsion, autonomy, and refining systems in deep space. When Odin was lost, AstroForge wrote off a spacecraft it had built for approximately $3.5 million.
Investors who need audited, transparent financial reporting should similarly bypass private pre-revenue space exploration companies. Privately backed startups disclose financial performance, mission metrics, and capital reserves at their own discretion.
What Would Change Our Assessment
Three technical and commercial milestones would fundamentally change how we evaluate space resource companies:
- Autonomous In-Space Refining Demonstration: If DeepSpace-2 reaches and lands on its target asteroid, and a follow-on spacecraft then demonstrates refining there, extraction moves from laboratory theory to proven engineering.
- Commercial Propellant Off-Take Execution: If Orbit Fab purchases extracted water or processed propellant from a private developer in orbit at a fixed price, the demand side of the space resources market becomes real.
- Delivery of Off-World Helium-3: If Interlune extracts lunar helium-3 and returns it to the United States Department of Energy by its April 2029 contract target, commercial space-to-Earth resource extraction will have its first real precedent.
The next dated test for the asteroid mining companies on this list is DeepSpace-2’s fourth-quarter 2026 launch, tracked on AstroForge’s DeepSpace-2 page.