When intrepid entrepreneurs discover that there are trillions of dollars’ worth of ore just hurtling through space, they see an opportunity. There’s only one problem. How do you move these high-priced rocks to Earth to sell? TransAstra, a Los Angeles startup, is working to capture asteroids in an inflatable bag. Yes, bagging up the rocks. The company’s Capture Bag was tested on the International Space Station last month. Besides the dreams of Klondike in the stars, the bag would have other practical applications, such as trapping space debris.
TransAstra states that it’s developing Capture Bags in six sizes. According to CNN, the sizes range from micro to super jumbo. The second-smallest size was successfully tested in an ISS airlock. The yard-wide device successfully inflated and then closed in a microgravity vacuum. The startup has much larger ambitions with plans for its largest bag to be capable of snatching a 10,000-ton asteroid. TransAstra already has a dozen ground-based telescopes searching for mining-suitable asteroids. The telescopes are called Sutter after Sutter’s Mill, a less-than-subtle reference to the California Gold Rush and its origin site. Company founder Joel Sercel said:
“They drift very slowly by the Earth, at a distance of just a few billion kilometers. We already know where hundreds of these objects are, and we’re planning on going and getting the first one in 2028 — that, we think, will foment a true industrial revolution in space.”
Space junk is a much more pressing issue
Despite ambitions of unprecedented wealth, TransAstra will have to crawl before learning how to walk. Man-made space junk in orbit is a pertinent issue that could be addressed by inflatable capture bags. The startup has secured $5 million in private investment and government funding in September to scale up its bags. However, government agencies like NASA and the US Space Force have debris capture in mind. The company’s devices could be used to move derelict satellites to locations safe from colliding with active spacecraft.
Space debris is becoming an increasingly relevant issue as spaceflight becomes more common. The return of China’s Shenzhou-20 was delayed when orbital debris struck the craft while it was docked at the Tiangong space station. Engineers deemed that it was unsafe for the crew to return in the damaged capsule after discovering tiny cracks in a window. As a result, the Shenzhou-20 crew returned to Earth in the Shenzhou-21 return capsule, the scheduled mission to replace them.
