Deep-space asteroid mining company building spacecraft and power systems
AstroForge is a 11–50 person spacecraft engineering firm extracting metals from asteroids. The tech stack—dominated by embedded systems (ARM, Embedded Linux, UART, I2C), mechanical CAD (Siemens NX, SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Mastercam), and analog circuit design (LTspice, PLECS, Altium, OrCAD)—reveals a hardware-first, flight-critical operation. Active projects span power systems, radio subsystems, thermal control, and qualification testing (thermal vacuum, vibration), matching a team skewed heavily toward mid-to-senior engineering (13 of 16 open roles) and bottlenecks in procurement and system coordination.
AstroForge designs and builds spacecraft for asteroid mining missions. The company operates from Seal Beach, California, and focuses on the mechanical, electrical, and thermal subsystems required for deep-space resource extraction. Work spans from concept design through flight qualification, including thermal vacuum and vibration testing. The organization is engineering-led, with active hiring concentrated in embedded systems, mechanical design, and avionics—consistent with a pre-commercial hardware company preparing for early missions. Near-term challenges include procurement lead times and managing cross-functional dependencies in parallel mission development.
Embedded systems (ARM, Embedded Linux, UART, I2C), mechanical CAD (Siemens NX, SolidWorks, Fusion 360), circuit design (Altium, LTspice, PLECS, OrCAD), and manufacturing tools (CNC, 5-axis CNC, Mastercam). Python and Rust for firmware and tooling.
Spacecraft subsystems for asteroid mining: power systems, S-band radio subsystems, thermal control, mechanical design, and qualification testing (thermal vacuum, vibration). Also developing internal thermal design tools and mission pipeline management.
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