SAN FRANCISCO — Exploration Labs, a Southern California startup focused on space resources, is planning a 2028 mission to rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis before it reaches Earth.
During the mission, ExLabs intends to deposit three cubesats in Apophos’ orbit. The flight also is designed to validate systems and software for future campaigns to capture and move near-Earth asteroids into stable orbits for resource acquisition.
“We’re creating a unique partnership to enable a new style of lower-cost missions in collaboration with government and commercial partners,” ExLabs CEO Matthew Schmidgall told SpaceNews.
ExLabs is developing massive modular spacecraft to host partner payloads, plus robotics to capture and transport space objects to new locations. Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle, or SERV, is an ExLabs spacecraft to host payloads with a mass of 30 tons. The Arachne Platform will capture and transport noncooperative objects, Schmidgall said.
Near-Term Focus
Leaders of Long Beach-based ExLabs are well aware of the challenges faced by previous space resource startups. As a result, they are focused on applying the company’s core technologies to existing and near-term space infrastructure challenges.
In 2023, ExLabs announced a $1.7 million SpaceWERX Small Business Innovation Research contract for technology related to autonomous capture and acquisition of space objects.
Earlier this year, ExLabs moved into a 9,000-square-meter facility in Long Beach. The facility is set up for additive manufacturing of spacecraft that are “much larger than standard platforms because asteroid acquisition requires a lot of mass, power and payload capacity,” Schmidgall said.
ExLabs was founded in 2023 by Schmidgall, former Rocket Motorsports managing partner, and Miguel Pascual, a former…
Read the full article here
