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The AstroForge’s spacecraft, Odin, is tumbling as it attempts to follow its trajectory to asteroid 2022 OB5. The spacecraft was launched on Thursday (26) with a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, and lost contact with the mission control team about 20 hours after leaving Earth.

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“I think we all know that hope is fading as we continue the mission,” commented Matt Gialich, founder of AstroForge, in a post on X on Saturday (1st). “We’ll keep our heads up. We’ll keep trying over the weekend and see how far we can get,” he concluded.

Update on the last 48 hours of Odin. It’s a long update with a lot of detail. We tried to get as much of it correct as we could, but please expect some small updates as we continue to look at all our data.https://t.co/9eUDHzVXwN pic.twitter.com/w6jV89OAsJ

— AstroForge (@astroforge) March 1, 2025

On Friday (28), AstroForge declared that the solar panels on the spacecraft were generating energy, and it was in the expected position. When the post on Twitter was made, Odin was about 300,000 km from Earth and seemed to be following its intended trajectory.

However, the spacecraft did not send complete telemetry data, and AstroForge has been having difficulties maintaining contact with the mission after launch. “I think losing our ground stations at the beginning really hurt our ability to fix any problems we had,” he observed.

The Odin’s battery has a capacity to last for about 2.5 hours. Since AstroForge received the last signal from the spacecraft 20 hours after launch, it’s possible that it still has enough energy to function.

Despite this, Gialich confirmed that the spacecraft is tumbling as it travels through space. “And when I say ‘tumbling,’ it’s really a very slow tumble. But we don’t know why, and this is going to be the problem in continuing,” he observed.

The Future of the Odin Spacecraft

The mission team continued trying to recover contact with the spacecraft over the weekend and had already reached some possible scenarios that might explain what happened. “If any of them are correct, then there’s still a path for recovery.”

In an update published on their website, AstroForge highlighted that they continue trying to contact the spacecraft. “Although we can’t guarantee success, one thing is certain: we’ll keep learning, trying, and experimenting in our goal — because space is hard, and you only get better by doing.”

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