ExLabs is a pioneering aerospace company dedicated to revolutionizing space exploration and resource utilization.
Created: 2023-07-14
Updated: 2025-09-06
Company - ExLabs (Exploration Laboratories)
Product/Service - Arachne Platform, Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle (SERV)
- Classification
- In-Space Transportation
- Category
- Active Debris Removal (ADR)
Space Mining
ISRU (In Situ Resource Utilization)
- Fields
- Asteroids
- Status
- Development
- First launch
- 2025
ExLabs plans mission to rendezvous with asteroid Apophis, SpaceNews, 2024-03-25.
- Planning a 2028 mission to rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis before it reaches Earth.
- During the mission, ExLabs intends to deposit three cubesats in Apophos’ orbit.
- The flight also is designed to validate systems and software for future campaigns to capture and move near-Earth asteroids into stable orbits for resource acquisition.
- ExLabs is developing massive modular spacecraft to host partner payloads, plus robotics to capture and transport space objects to new locations. Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle, or SERV, is ExLabs’ spacecraft to host payloads with a mass as high as 30 metric tons in its fully stacked configuration.
- ExLabs’ Arachne Platform is designed to capture and transport noncooperative objects.
ExLabs wins funds to accelerate space robotics, SpaceNews, 2024-06-18.
- $1.9 million Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) from SpaceWERX.
- ACQR is ExLab’s autonomous capture and acquisition robot. ExLabs also is developing Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle, or SERV, a spacecraft designed to host payloads of 30 metric tons in its fully stacked configuration.
- When SERV and ACQR are combined, they “will be capable of capture and control of large objects in space,” Schmidgall said.
- “The long-term goal for ExLabs is to provide the world’s largest operational spacecraft to support asteroid retrieval missions for in-situ resource utilization in cis-lunar space.
ApophisExL
Notes
- At ExLabs we are pioneering the development and construction of a huge debris cleanup vehicle to handle the largest and most dangerous debris.
- ExLabs and XDLINX Partner to Accelerate Development of Advanced Satellite Systems, 2024-11-26. ExLabs and XDLINX will co-develop advanced spacecraft subsystems, leveraging ExLabs' modular spacecraft platform (SERV) and XDLINX's state-of-the-art satellite technologies.
- Exlabs and Antares form alliance to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft, 2025-03-19.
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