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+.

“Over the next two years, we are building the technology and infrastructure to make it possible to access materials in orbit and transform them into rocket fuel to supply the space economy. We believe the Regolith Age, powered by abundant space resources, is an inevitability that we can accelerate and we’re delighted to have the support of passionate investors on this journey with us.”

Central to Karman+’s roadmap is excavating regolith material from near-Earth asteroids and extracting water for refuelling in orbit. This water can be used directly to power spacecraft or decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen, eliminating the need to launch from Earth. This lowers refuelling costs for satellites in orbit by up to 10x compared to Earth-sourced fuel.

The company says it will initially use asteroid regolith for refuelling space tugs that service geostationary satellites. This existing market will be used a stepping stone to asteroid-based In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU), including in-orbit manufacturing for pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

“Opening up the space economy will be essential in the long term to build our resilience here on Earth for solving challenges like climate change by accessing these critical materials,” said Sten Tamkivi, partner at Plural, which led the funding round.

“But many steps must be taken before we get there. Teun and Daynan (Crull, Karman+ mission architect) are ripping up the space rulebook and using their previous startup experience to build a new type of asteroid mining company that will first tap into a great need: supplying water and fuel to existing space programs. I’m excited to partner with a successful, experienced founder on such a globally significant mission.”