Investors in startups working in the technology sector are putting their network further into unchartered areas, sometimes even literally. In one of the latest examples, one is Karman+ With the ambition to build autonomous spacecraft that can head to asteroids and then mine them for the materials, $20 million in seed rounds has been raised to use it to get itself into the next phase of hardware and software development.
Karman+’s initial goal is very beyond the reach. Its purpose is to build a potential asteroid that can head to potential, potentially away from millions of miles, dig them, extract water from the material (called Regolith), and then return to Earth’s orbit, using the water Refuel and propel the aging satellite to extend its lifespan.
Later, it found the opportunity to work further, extract rare metals and other materials from asteroids and contribute to the development of a wider space manufacturing ecosystem to offset or supplement work on Earth.
It sounds like something like science fiction (this is because Astroid mining is the core theme in the 2013 Nebula Award Winner, called “2312”.
But the team believes that with autonomous technology, advances in space exploration and Karman+’s own work has built the spacecraft so far using ready-made components, the team is approaching its goal.
Karman+ believes that the mission can run for $10 million or less, and so far it has spent $1 billion on exploring asteroids. And, the potential market for cheering is worth billions of dollars a year.
The team currently aims to release it for the first time in 2027.
Karman+, based in Denver, Colorado, is rooted in the Netherlands through co-founder and CEO Teun van den Dries. Through this euro connection, Karman+ has found willing investors to advance their journey.
London-based plural and Antwerp-based Hummingbird leads this sub-technology-focused HCVC (created by Paris), Kevin Mahaffey, Kevin Mahaffey Kevin Mahaffey, the unnamed angel and Van Den Dries attended.
Karman+ Karman Linea concept of the end of the Earth’s atmosphere and the beginning of “space”. It’s also a suitable metaphor for how Van Den Dries set up a company with co-founder Daynan Crull.
The two worked together in a previous business at van den dries, a real estate data startup called Geophy get $290 million in 2022. Following the acquisition, Van Den Dries said he began reevaluating his career priorities.
He described himself as a “sci-fi nerd” who studied aerospace engineering at college but never worked in the field. Instead, he has been building a SaaS company for the past 20 years.
“Two years ago, I was at a turning point,” he recalled. “I could do SaaS-optimized games for another five years, and the business could be bigger and more valuable. Or, I could spend my time and energy on me. I think it will have a greater impact on things.”
Van Den Dries collaborated with Karman+’s mission architect Crull, a training data scientist, and his attention turned to space.
He said of the space market: “I want to invest in something.” This ruled out convergence, he also thought. Startups working on converged technologies have raised more than $5 billion in funding Trading Room data.
Mining asteroids are a new boundary, but also represent potential cost efficiency, because usually when an organization wants to do something in space, it needs to start all the components from Earth, which is very expensive.
“The beauty of asteroids is that they are on the right plane,” he said of orbit. “This is the easiest, cheapest, fastest place to get resources, and compared to the moon, it is actually also from Earth.” launch it compared to. So if you can provide unlocking [material] At attractive prices. You can start building a flywheel that allows you to do all kinds of things that we simply can’t do now. ”
This is not the only one trying to do this: Astrov It is another asteroid mining startup. But this is obviously easier said than done. There are several variables to deal with the first phase of the Karman+ roadmap.
The startup’s spacecraft is not yet completed, let alone testing. Although the Karman+ founders think they can reduce the cost to around $10 million, so far, asteroids have only been detected by spacecraft a few times before. This is made up of NASA and a team of Japanese teams, and it comes at a huge price: a NASA mission exceeds $1 billion.
Also, the asteroid orbiting the sun is moving its target itself, unless you Calculate odds – They are not near the earth. This NASA page The closest way to track these rocks, which range in size and may be as large as buildings, and point out hundreds of thousands and millions of miles from the Earth.
Then there is the problem with the satellite itself. The premise of Karman+’s extraction is that it can be used for refueling, but not everyone actually uses hydrogen and oxygen (solar energy and batteries are used as well). Come on, it is not a completely solved problem, it seems Other methods Playing.
Karman+ has another more mundane obstacle: it will require more money to be raised to get closer to launch.
This is not something Karman+ or its investors are currently considering, with ambitions once.
“I had this conversation very suspiciously and one thing I found was that the founder was very suspicious, too,” said Sten Tamkivi, a partner at Plural. Skepticism is a kind of control, which Tamkivi believes will help the team stay realistic as they progress. It gave him the confidence to put money into this (literally) distant idea, he said.
“I think you saw more YOLO In the software world,” he added. “People think, hey, everything is built, so you just farm and you’re going to figure out what’s going on in the future. Astronauts, they actually made detailed plans. You can review, dig and get third-party comments. ”
