← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Orbital debris remediation as a stepping stone toward asteroid mining.
00:22:07
On Deep Space, Maria Varmazis speaks with TransAstra's Joe Sercel about their recently demonstrated orbital debris capture-bag technology aboard the ISS and the goal of asteroid mining.
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Hi everyone. I'm back from my vacation and back on the microphone. And that means for you a new interview all about asteroid mining and orbital debris remediation served up fresh just for you. So let's get to it.
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Foreign.
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Today is May 3, 2026. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T minus. Today's interview is with Joel Sercil, the President and CEO of TransAstra. Now this company had made the rounds in the news quite a bit last year with their successful tech demo aboard the International Space Station of their capture bag. And when I heard about this company and when we reached out to them for an interview, I'll admit I jumped to conclusions about what they do and figured, oh yeah, very interesting. They're passionate about their solution to orbital debris remediation and yes, that's a growing high priority problem and it makes sense that they're working towards a solution there. But in conversation with Joel, it ends up that I fundamentally misunderstood Transastra's goals and orbital debris. Yes, but according to him, orbital debris remediation is a stepping stone to a much, much larger goal. And that would be asteroid mining with a capture bag. Yeah, interesting pitch, right? Here's our chat for more.
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Well, I've always been in the space business ever since I was a kid. I used to fake getting sick when I was in high school and come home and read books about space and do calculations and design things. But then I got an undergraduate degree in engineering physics when I worked for JPL for 14 years. While I was at JPL, I picked up a PhD at Caltech in plasma physics and space propulsion. Wow. And I did pretty much every job at JPL. I ran NASA's Advanced Propulsion Technology Program, JPL Spacecraft Technology. I was the chief architect of JPL's engineering process. And then I decided to get more involved in the private sector and industry. So I left jpl. I was teaching at Caltech full time, but also consulting and contract engineering and that sort of thing and was kind of frustrated with where the space endeavor was going and then took a consulting gig with an east coast client that was looking at buying rockets from SpaceX. And this was, this was about 10 years ago and it looked like they were really going to achieve reusable rockets. And that for me that meant that what I thought would occur by about the late 90s or early 2000s was going to occur. Which is, which is massive satellite systems in space, human settlements, outpost on the moon, all that kind of stuff. And I realized that the missing ingredient in the space ecosystem is a company that has the wherewithal to mine asteroids to get those resources so that we can move manufacturing of space assets from the ground into space, so that we actually have the materials in space to build things like massive data centers, power stations, massive constellations of hundreds of thousands, even millions of satellites and build worlds in space that people can live in. And so I founded Transastra about 10 years ago, got some seed funding from NASA for all the breakthrough technologies, took them from inventions that were way too early for venture to proven inventions and got it. So it was mature enough for early seed stage investors. By about 2021, went through Y Combinator, raised a handful of millions out of Y Combinator started scaling the company. Now we've done about $15 million of Space Force and NASA work maturing the systems. We flew our capture bag on ISS in October. We've got a global network of telescopes prospecting for space and doing what's called space domain awareness, finding satellites in deep space for the Space Force and NASA. And now we are ready to go do the asteroid thing. We're ready to go start the trillion dollar asteroid industry. We've got all the technologies ready, we've got the contracts and relationships with the right government customers ready. We have a government client that's interested in making it happen to foment massive industries in space. And we're about to start scaling on the investment side too. So it's a great time to talk to you.
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Yeah, Joel, I'm thrilled that I get to speak with you because I read about the capture bag experiment, the ISS last year. Big, great success, congratulations. And I know that's just a tiny, I mean it sounds like, I don't mean to diminish it. I know that your ambitions are way bigger than that, but just hearing about capture bag on the ISS that was super cool. And I know we want to get into asteroid mining, but could you tell me a little bit about how Capture BAG went last year, and then we'll move on to asteroid mining. I just want to hear about it from you.
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So we developed Capture BAG initially with an eye towards asteroid mining, because anything that people talk about going to an asteroid, landing on asteroid, you know, doing the things that people talk about on asteroids, it's mostly all wrong. You really have to be able to capture the asteroid in a bag to contain all the regolith that'll just fly around otherwise. And what we found is that there's, there's about 500 times more small asteroids on the order of 5 to 10 meters, to call that 15 to 30ft. Yeah, about 500 times more of those than the big ones that NASA finds in its programs. So there's lots of little ones and there's little. And those are the targets that are closest, that are easiest to get resources from, much easier to get resources from the asteroids than the, than the moon. So we started developing our asteroid tech and we realized, holy shoot, this is, this is also very powerful for orbital debris cleanup. And that is a critical problem in low Earth orbit. Especially with people now talking about building gigawatts of data centers in low Earth orbit. If you build constellations with thousands or tens of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, orbital debris is a difficult but not insurmountable problem. But when you're talking about building up to what Elon is saying now, millions of data centers in sun synchronous orbit starting in low Earth orbit, the debris environment just makes that a really untenable problem. And so orbital debris cleanup is critical. And so the same capture bags, but scaled smaller that we can use to go get asteroids, can also be used for orbital debris cleanup. So we did a small capture bag demonstration on ISS in October. What was really cool about that is our team went from basically sketches on a whiteboard to flight hardware in six months.
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Wow.
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And delivered it to our friends in Texas, who then integrated it with Northrop Grumman resupply vehicle that was launched on a Falcon 9. Then they flew to the space station, mounted it on the outside of the space station in the Bishop airlock. And so we were able to demonstrate that it works in vacuum and microgravity the same way we thought it would. So it was a smashing success. It was a smashing success in many ways because the system had some faults. And our engineers were able to work around that and show the redundancy and robustness of the system. So it couldn't have been a better demonstration for capture back. So I'd recommend that People go to our website@transastor.com and check that out and there's some videos there for sure.
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Yeah, it is a great video and I remember learning about it last year and going that is just logical and also very cool. Nice. Yeah, it was like, that just makes a lot of sense. And the bag can open and close repeatedly also. Just very, very smart design. I just was like, this is a really good idea. So just wanted to say that. So I want, I know you want to talk about asteroid mining especially and I really wanted to hear your take on, I guess, misconceptions about asteroid mining. We could even start with things like, you know, it's, we're talking, it's decades away and you're saying it's much closer than that. Maybe we start there.
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Yeah. So we've actually started working with an important government customer who's dead serious about helping foment massive trillion dollar industries for the United States and the, and the free world in space. And to do that we're going to have to harvest up to a million tons of material very soon and learn how to process it into propellants, metals, semiconductors, all the things that you need for space industry. And the thing here is if we don't do that, the Chinese will do it. And they've already leapfrogged us in most areas of space technology. People don't see this because they look at the, at the short term lead that we have right now, mostly as a result of the great work that SpaceX has done with reusable launch and manufacturing many satellites and operating Starlink Constellation. Now that it's been proven that is possible, many governments around the world are planning to do the same. China has, I think, six reusable launch vehicles that are planned to be demonstrated in 2026.
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Yeah, they're definitely working on it.
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So we have this temporary lead due to launch and manufacturing, but China is the world's leading manufacturer and they're going to be able to manufacture satellites very efficiently as soon as they crack the low cost launch problem. And they're well on their way to catching up or even leapfrogging us there. So. And you know, we work a lot with the Department of Defense, the Space Force, and we see all the stuff that China is doing and let me tell you, they're ahead of us in everything that SpaceX is not dominating and they're after SpaceX. So we've got to take the next great leap. And the next great leap is instead of manufacturing the hardware on the ground, we need to make it in space. Now, most people look up into the sky and they see the moon, and it's a great source of resources. But there's a counterintuitive result that I want everyone in the audience to remember, and that is There are about 15,000 mostly undiscovered, but they're being discovered at a very fast rate. Small asteroids that have returned delta Vs to get material from the asteroid to where you can make stuff out of it for industry. Their return delta Vs are much less than the moon. So it's much cheaper to get that material from the asteroids than the moon. And the advantage of the asteroids is that the material is just right there. You don't have to go digging for it. Now, the moon has a lot of valuable materials that are just right there, like oxygen, silicon, aluminum, mostly, and that's really valuable. But the problem is you have to launch it up out of the moon's gravity well. And when you do, then you're still in lunar orbit. You're not in a useful place. And what we found is that the asteroids Are actually much easier to get material from than the moon. But then the different asteroids Are each full of different materials that are very valuable. Probably one in five of these asteroids Is what we call a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid, which is probably 10% water. 5% of them are made of metals, which are great for making things in space. The majority of them are stony iron. Materials are stony or stony iron, which are full of silicon and the materials you need for semiconductors as well as metals, just like the moon. So pretty much anything you need for industry in space is right there with the asteroids. And they're easier to get to, to and from in terms of rocket propellant than the moon.
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We'll be right back.
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Exactly. It makes no sense to go get precious metals from the asteroids and bring them to the Earth. The economics don't pencil out. Even though, you know, there is this critical thing where China's controlling global rare, you know, rare earth metals and all that kind of stuff. It turns out we just need to dig more holes in the ground for those. The best metal asteroids that we've seen are a little better. Well, the science community understands exactly what the distribution of precious metals and asteroids is. And that sort of thing with error bars, it's all. Well, the statistical uncertainties are all bounded and we just don't see a business case there. We respect the people who do and wish them the best of luck, but we just don't see it.
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Understood. Understood. So the idea is, again, it would be the. The small. These are smaller asteroids compared to, I think, what a lot of people would be thinking of. But as you said, the scale is much more under, you know, it's capturable. As opposed to, you know, a city killer or something like that.
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Exactly. So, you know, a typical, a typical big communication satellite in geostationary orbit weighs about as much as a big pickup truck.
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Yep.
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Maybe a small bus. And these asteroids we're talking about are about as big as a single family house. And so you can make a capture bag that can capture them that, you know, that fits in a small container, a couple hundred kilograms. You fly out there with a spacecraft that's not much bigger than a typical geostationary satellite, grab it in the bag, and with the tiny nudges of Delta V, you can use celestial mechanics, the tricks of celestial mechanics to bring it into a permanent orbit high in the Earth Moon system, where it's very accessible for robotic materials processing and manufacturing processes.
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Thank you for explaining that, because I can imagine some people would be thinking catching it as if like a baseball glove catching something. And that is, I was thinking to myself, there's no way that's what you guys would be doing. That would not make any sense. But what you described makes a lot more sense using orbital mechanics to your advantage. So that is a Lot more efficient.
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Yeah. So, yeah, you basically fly out to it, rendezvous with it at zero velocity, captured, and the bag deploys. We have videos of this posted at various places online on our YouTube channel, on our website. People want more information about it, feel free to email me. But you fly up to it, you capture it. By the way, the process is very similar for how you capture big pieces of orbital debris or defunct satellites that need to be deorbited. And so, you know, and we're going to be. We're going to have to do that. Being good stewards of the space environment is going to be critical as we start to populate space with. It's gone from a few thousand to several thousand satellites in the last few years. We're just at the beginning of the exponential increase in the number and quantity of satellites in space. And people think of space as being huge, and it is, but low Earth orbit, not so people think, well, low Earth orbit is so huge. Look, it's like bigger than the ocean. And, you know, we have thousands and thousands of ships in the ocean and airplanes in the sky, and they don't collide all the time. But the difference is the. The debris in low Earth orbit is going at 8km per second. It covers a lot more ground.
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Yep.
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And so your intuition about size from terrestrial experience is wrong. And there are some pieces of debris and defunct satellites up there that are breeding more debris and they really need to be taken out. You know, it's funny how the technology for asteroid mining involves solving these four problems that we call detect, capture, move, and process. Detect is about telescopes for finding the objects. Captures, the capture bag. Move is propulsion, technology and processes, material processing. Those four processes are the same whether you're asteroid mining or dealing with orbital degree. And we have a tech stack of about 25 patents now with a new patent being issued about every month that covers all of that. We've done meaningful work in each of those areas, working with the government to mature that tech, to pave the way for massive industries. And we do have a plan to go out and get an asteroid this decade and own it. And that that will be a sea change. That'll be a fundamental demonstration that shows that humans can go out and own huge quantities of very valuable materials and turn that into big industries. And at that point, we see our valuation skyrocketing.
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That's T minus deep space. Brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app or you can send an email to space2k.com we're proud that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies agencies, N2K helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K's lead producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Heltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Peter Kilby is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.
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