Asteroid-mining startup plans to hand a deep-space probe to AI control
AstroForge says its in-house transformer stack Solo will command a probe in 2027 with no Earth radios; the end-2026 shadow-mode flight is the test to watch.
Original event 2026-09-22
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AstroForge plans to let its in-house transformer model, Solo, take full control of a spacecraft on the 2027 Autonomy-1 mission, and CEO Matthew Gialich says he currently does not plan to fly radios that can receive commands from Earth.
The stack combines traditional control algorithms, models trained per subsystem, and an intelligence layer trained on about 2,500 spacecraft sensors to resolve anomalies in flight. The company turned to onboard autonomy after losing contact with its Odin probe, partly because ground-antenna windows are scarce.
On the timeline, Solo first flies in shadow mode on DeepSpace-2 by the end of 2026, then on the first rocket from Stoke Space in 2027. Both prior prototypes missed most mission objectives, and Gialich himself expects his team may talk him into keeping the radios — the plan is unproven until those flights happen.