I don’t say much about asteroid mining, because mining companies don’t work via peer review and can stay in stealth mode for a while. Still:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/a-private-space-company-has-a-radical-new-plan-to-bag-an-asteroid/
Eric Berger, March 18 A private space company has a radical new plan to bag an asteroid
That space company is TransAstra, whom I’ve written about before. Now, mining companies have come and gone before, but I wouldn’t dismiss TransAstra as a bunch of dreamers with no chance. Several things have occurred to me about this particular NewSpace entrant:
-At minimum, TransAstra has been around for a while. Must be doing something right.
-‘Something’ includes basic research that can and has won academic grants… because it’s that basic.
-Other ‘somethings’ include asteroid search, demonstrating TransAstra grasps the issue before them.
-…that asteroid search tech already earned at least one patent, demonstrating a tech “stack”/”moat”.
-They have, at least on a small scale, done hardware demonstration. No PowerPoint rocketry here.
-On at least some level, further TransAstra work has won funding. No vaporware (so far…).
-And of course, I’ve met some of them. For what it’s worth (…), they did not strike me as wanks.
Granted, reality is a harsh proving ground, and none of the above is a guarantee against failure (technological or market or otherwise). Still, let’s cheer on TransAstra. The notion of “competition” in a hard-won proving ground is, as Jeff Bezos puts it, a struggle against gravity, not so much other companies. If any one company succeeds, every other company is validated by extension.
And speaking of validation: Ars Technica is being a bit gratuitous when they call TransAstra’s concept “radical.” It was radical a decade ago, when NASA first proposed it. Validated by extension, eh.