American startup Astroforge plans to become the first company to master the extraction of minerals from asteroids and their delivery to Earth.

The startup has already received $13 million in seed investment to develop its project. The founders of the startup, former SpaceX, NASA and Virgin Orbit engineers are Matt Gialich and Jose Acain. They have developed a fundamentally new technology for processing materials in outer space, but specific details have not yet been disclosed. What is currently known is that this technology requires a high vacuum and only works in zero gravity. Astroforge promises to demonstrate it in low-Earth orbit as early as 2023 and to arrange the supply of minerals from space before the end of this decade.