Deep Space Industries

DSI was formally announced on January 22, 2013. DSI spent 3-½ years investigating the feasibility of space resource utilization. In late 2015, DSI received venture funding to begin the development of a propulsion system and spacecraft capable of traveling from low Earth orbit (LEO) to deep space on its own.

As of 2013, the company CEO was David Gump, previously of Transformational Space Corporation and Astrobotic Technology. Chairman Rick N. Tumlinson was a founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, among other organizations in the field of space exploration.

In December 2014, Daniel Faber became the CEO. In January 2017 DSI named Bill Miller as Chief Executive Officer. Miller was a startup strategist.

In 2019 the company was acquired by Bradford Space, a manufacturer of spaceflight components & systems.

As of June 2018, Deep Space Industries was working on a series of technologies that aimed to lower the cost of access to high Earth orbits and deep space for private companies and government agencies.

Xplorer was a spacecraft concept designed to use its own propulsion system to travel from low Earth orbit (LEO) to an Earth departure trajectory or higher Earth orbits such as geostationary orbit (GEO). Xplorer was to be built to enable exploration and high delta-V applications within low Earth orbits, geosynchronous orbit, near-Earth asteroids, and deep space destinations such as Lunar orbits, Venus, or Mars.

Xplorer was planned to give a 10 kg payload a delta-V capability of approximately 5 km/s, with greater payload masses possible at lower delta-V requirements. Xplorer was planned to be capable of launching on a variety of commercial rideshares to low Earth orbit, and to decouple launch timing from orbit raising and Earth departure maneuvers.

Meteor was a non-toxic rocket thruster using propellants capable of being synthesized from in-space resources. It was designed & prototyped as the propulsive core of the Xplorer vehicle.

Criticism

The announcement of DSI was met with both praise and criticism. Several unnamed scientists questioned whether cost-effective asteroid mining could even be accomplished given competition in Earth terrestrial markets and the high cost of returning high-value minerals to Earth. However, DSI responded to these statements by stating that the majority of the materials mined — principally water — would be destined for use in space, thus avoiding the enormous fuel costs of repeatedly returning to and escaping from Earth's gravitational field, and additionally, that servicing communications satellite constellations could earn the company $5 to 8 million per month.

Whether Deep Space Industries would be competing in similar services as Planetary Resources was also questioned. In particular, Planetary Resources did not release information on their intentions for processing, power generation, or in-space manufacturing hardware and equipment.

Deep Space Industries did not announce its spacecraft manufacturing partnerships for the FireFly 1.