Asteroid mining startup Karman+ raises $20m

The cash injection will be used to accelerate progress on High Frontier, Karman+’s first technical demonstration mission, set to launch in 2027. High Frontier will aim to validate the company’s approach to deep space mining, testing autonomous navigation systems and zero-gravity mining equipment for asteroid regolith excavation. 

In recent years, returning material from asteroids has been demonstrated by multiple missions, including JAXA’s Hayabusa 1 and 2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx. However, these ambitious missions have come with significant costs. OSIRIS-REx cost over $1.3 billion to return 121 grams of material - equivalent to about $10.7 billion per kilogram. Karman+ is aiming reduce the cost of delivering material to customers by several orders of magnitude.

“The idea of mining asteroids has moved out of science fiction and academic research into a commercial market opportunity that we can build for today,” said Teun van den Dries, co-founder and CEO of Karman+.