AstroForge develops autonomous AI for 2027 spacecraft mission

AstroForge, a commercial asteroid mining startup, is developing an onboard AI control system to manage spacecraft autonomy during deep-space missions. The system, referred to as Autonomy-1 or Solo, utilizes a transformer-based AI model to handle navigation, tracking, and decision-making. This approach aims to overcome the significant communication delays between Earth and deep space, which can range from minutes to hours.

The hardware architecture includes radiation-hardened SAMRH71 microcontrollers for core flight functions and an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial flight computer for perception and guidance tasks. The company intends to test this technology during a 2027 mission launched on a Stoke Space rocket. This mission, which is expected to gather scientific data about the Sun, will be supported by NASA.

The development of this autonomous stack follows challenges faced by AstroForge’s previous prototype, the Odin spacecraft, which experienced communication difficulties in 2025. The company plans to build upon its DeepSpace-2 platform, scheduled for launch in late 2026, to advance its reconnaissance and characterization capabilities for near-Earth objects.