Astroforge, an American company specializing in asteroid mining, is preparing to launch its "Autonomy-1" spacecraft in early 2027, in an experiment that the company says will be the first space mission to fully complete its mission after separating from the rocket without receiving any command from Earth.
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The vehicle will carry the "Solo" artificial intelligence system, designed to analyze the vehicle's condition and make decisions in real time, instead of waiting for intervention from ground control teams.
The experiment comes in response to a problem that is becoming increasingly important as companies move towards operating fleets of vehicles in space; managing each vehicle from Earth requires operating teams, communication stations, and time to analyze data and send commands.
AstroForge says that ground-based operating costs account for roughly a third of its mission costs, so it is seeking to transfer some of the decision-making process to the spacecraft itself. Autonomy-1 will launch aboard a Stockspace Nova Pathfinder rocket on its first orbital flight in early 2027.
The idea of making spacecraft behave autonomously is not new. In 1999, NASA tested the "Remote Agent" system on the "Deep Space 1" spacecraft, which was launched in October 1998. During a 48-hour experiment, the program was able to plan and execute some operations, monitor the vehicle's condition, and deal with simulated malfunctions.
However, it was a limited test, and the vehicle did not become an autonomous system throughout its mission. Astroforge presents "Solo" as an intelligence layer that operates on top of traditional flight software based on physical models, receiving information about the vehicle's status, determining if there is a malfunction, and then choosing the next course of action.
Prior to "Autonomy-1", the system will undergo its first test on the "Deep Space-2" mission, where it will operate in shadow mode: analyzing data and making hypothetical decisions, but the vehicle will not execute them.
Astroforge was founded in January 2022 with the goal of developing technologies to extract resources from the solar system, particularly minerals found in asteroids. However, its past record illustrates the scale of the challenge. In April 2023, the company launched the Bruker-1 spacecraft, but it was unable to operate the refining technology it carried. Then, in February 2025, it launched Odin into deep space to study a near-Earth asteroid, but it encountered communication problems and the mission ended in failure. Therefore, Autonomy-1 also represents a test of the company's ability to transition from past experiments to the independent operation of a spacecraft in orbit.
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