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SpaceX to launch asteroid mining spacecraft alongside private Moon lander

Intuitive Machines' IM-2 lander will be joined by several diverse rideshare payloads when SpaceX launches it to the Moon.

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SpaceX customer Intuitive Machines says it will use spare capacity on one of its Moon lander launches to send startup AstroForge’s first asteroid prospector spacecraft into deep space.

Intuitive Machines’ second Nova-C Moon lander is scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) Q4 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The IM-2 lander is the primary payload but is only expected to weigh about 1.9 tons (~4300 lb). To take advantage of the rocket performance left on the table by the relatively light payload, Intuitive Machines has opted to include a secondary payload adapter ring (ESPA) located below each lander. That gives companies like AstroForge an opportunity to hitch a ride to high Earth orbit, deep space, and the Moon for a likely unbeatable price.

Built by UK startup Orbital Astronautics, AstroForge’s Brokkr-2 spacecraft will attempt to become the first private vehicle to prospect for resources on an asteroid. It’s also the third rideshare payload announced for Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission.

Lunar Trailblazer

Coincidentally, the main purpose of the second IM-2 rideshare payload to be announced is to search for resources in space. It isn’t concerned with asteroids, but NASA’s 200-kilogram (440 lb) Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft is designed to find, characterize, and map water ice resources on the Moon. That map could help future missions explore the possibility of turning lunar ice into commodities like breathable oxygen or rocket propellant.

The challenges facing such a concept are extreme, but a rocket propellant depot located on the lunar surface could significantly increase the performance of future Moon landers. Propellant depots in cislunar orbit could also help boost spacecraft further and faster to destinations elsewhere in the solar system.

Lunar Trailblazer. (JPL)

Tanker-002

The first IM-2 rideshare payload to be announced was OrbitFab’s Tanker-002 spacecraft. It’s unclear if OrbitFab is on track to fly Tanker-002 in late 2023, but the spacecraft is meant to be the first geostationary propellant depot ever launched. The Colorado startup has already won a $13.3 million contract from the US military to refuel satellites in geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers (~22,250 mi) above Earth’s surface. It’s possible that Tanker-002 is meant to support that refueling mission.

The spacecraft is designed to carry a few hundred pounds of hydrazine monopropellant, potentially enabling it to extend the useful lives of multiple multimillion-dollar satellites by several years. Alongside IM-2, Falcon 9 will launch Tanker-002 on a lunar flyby trajectory. But thanks to the cooperation of startup GeoJump, instead of entering orbit around the Moon, Tanker-002 will slingshot around the Moon to slow itself down. That lunar slingshot will allow the depot to efficiently enter geostationary orbit, where it can begin refueling spacecraft.

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Tanker-002. (OrbitFab)

Brokkr-2

Brokkr-2 is the second of two AstroForge spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2023. The first, Brokkr-1, will head to low Earth orbit (LEO) as early as April 2023 on SpaceX’s seventh Falcon 9 rideshare launch. Once in orbit, it will attempt to demonstrate technology AstroForge has developed to refine platinum ore in microgravity conditions. Brokkr-2 will then visit an asteroid and search for platinum resources. If enough platinum is discovered, Bloomberg reports that AstroForge will send a third mission to demonstrate the ability to land on the asteroid. As early as 2025, AstroForge’s fourth mission would be the first to attempt to land, gather ore, turn that ore into platinum, and return the precious metal to Earth.

AstroForge has raised $13 million to date. Unlike failed asteroid mining startups Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, the new company intends to exploit increasingly capable off-the-shelf hardware and services to keep its costs as low as possible. In theory, that will allow it to focus most of its resources on developing the unproven technology required to gather and refine space-based resources.

Brokkr-2 will be based on UK startup OrbAstro’s ORB-50 satellite bus.

IM-2

Finally, the IM-2 Nova-C Moon lander’s primary payload is a pair of NASA instruments designed to drill into the lunar surface and analyze the regolith for volatiles. Also known as PRIME-1, the mission will be NASA’s first serious exploration of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) on the Moon.

The mission is a sort of microcosm of the future of space utilization, which may focus heavily on ISRU and refueling to extend the capabilities of chemically-powered rockets and spacecraft. Lunar Trailblazer will map lunar water resources. Brokkr-2 will attempt to prospect an asteroid for extractable metal. IM-2 will test technologies that could help extract resources from the Moon. And Tanker-002 will be a significant step forward for commercial propellant depots, which could eventually create markets for space resources.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade

Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.

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Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)
Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)

Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.

The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”

The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.

It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.

The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.

For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.

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Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next

Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.

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Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.

Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.

RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.

Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.

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Elon Musk roasts India’s billionaire Mukesh Ambani as Starlink fight heats up

Elon Musk sarcastically calls Mukesh Ambani ‘Prime Minister’ as the Starlink India standoff escalates again.

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Elon Musk escalated his public fight over Starlink’s launch in India on Friday, addressing Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” in a sarcastic post on X. “Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” Musk wrote, before accusing Ambani of “monopolistic exploitation” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete.” In follow up posts, he said Starlink has proven essential during natural disasters and would help parts of India with no internet access.

The post came two days into a fight that Musk sparked up on Wednesday, when he said Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He called it “a crime against the people of India” and left the names out, adding only, “You can guess who they are.” Jio and Airtel together hold more than 80% of India’s telecom market. On Thursday, Musk asked whether Ambani is “the real boss of India” and said Starlink has spent five years complying with “every single law and requirement” of the Indian government.

India’s government has pushed back each time. The Ministry of Communications called the suggestion that its framework is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived.” Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Friday that three companies hold satcom licenses: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti backed Eutelsat OneWeb. Amazon’s Kuiper, now Amazon Leo, is still going through the process. None can launch until regulators finalize satellite spectrum pricing and the Home Ministry signs off on each company’s security compliance. Scindia said the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications are close to a decision on pricing, The Hindu reported. Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal also said OneWeb is still waiting on approvals.

Starlink received its operator license in 2025 after a three year wait, and the space regulator IN-SPACe granted what industry executives called the last approval needed in July. The holdup since then centers on security, particularly concern that foreign operators could bypass Indian gateways.

Musk and Ambani have been on opposite sides of this before. In late 2024, Ambani argued for auctioning satellite spectrum, which Musk criticized as out of step with the rest of the world, and India chose administrative allocation instead. By March 2025, the two sides had signed a deal to sell Starlink devices in Reliance stores, and Starlink secured its telecom license that June. That partner is now also a competitor. Jio is reportedly weighing a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites costing an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion, while Akash Ambani has told shareholders Jio plans to lease capacity from global providers to move quickly.

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