AstroForge to Fly 2027 Spacecraft With No Earth Control

Asteroid-mining startup AstroForge will fly Autonomy-1 in 2027 controlled solely by its in-house Solo software, CEO Matthew Gialich said, with no receiver to take commands from Earth. The AI-based system, built on transformer models, follows two faulty prototypes and 2025 Odin radio problems. Solo will first fly in test-only shadow mode on DeepSpace-2, launching by end of 2026.