AstroForge is putting AI in command of its next spacecraft — SkimNews
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- AstroForge developed "Solo," an in-house transformer-based control stack, prompted by the loss of its 2025 Odin deep-space probe — a spacecraft the company couldn't communicate with due to a limited number of large ground antennas.
- Solo combines traditional control algorithms, subsystem-specific models trained on test data, and an intelligence layer trained on roughly 2,500 spacecraft sensors, according to head of flight software Armand Awad.
- AstroForge's third vehicle, DeepSpace-2, is set to launch alongside Intuitive Machines' third moon mission by the end of 2026, with Solo flying in "shadow mode" so engineers can evaluate it before full deployment.
- AstroForge plans its first autonomous mission, Autonomy-1, in 2027 aboard the first rocket launched by Stock Space — a NASA-backed flight intended to gather scientific data about the Sun.
- CEO Matthew Gialich said Autonomy-1 will not carry radios capable of receiving signals from Earth, framing the trade-off as spending roughly $200 million on a five-dish global ground network versus committing to onboard AI.
- Most spacecraft autonomy still relies on traditional control algorithms because of neural-network reliability concerns; the first use of a neural network to position a satellite in orbit occurred only in 2025.
- Founded in 2022 with $56 million in venture funding, AstroForge has launched two prototypes, both of which suffered anomalies that prevented them from meeting most mission objectives.
Why it matters: Gialich framed the decision as a binary: build a $200 million five-dish ground network, or commit to a constrained transformer-based autonomy. With two prior prototype failures, neural-network satellite control demonstrated only once in 2025, and NASA missions like Osiris-Rex requiring 100 flight operators per shift, AstroForge's Autonomy-1 is a high-stakes test of whether a small startup's onboard AI can replace the ground teams that traditional spaceflight depends on.
Ask SkimNews
