Luxembourg to protect future space mining resources
Luxembourg has adopted draft legislation granting private space mining companies rights towards extraterrestrial resources which they may extract in the future.
"The legal framework we put in place is perfectly in line with the Outer Space Treaty, meaning that our law does not suggest to either establish or imply in any way sovereignty over a territory or over a celestial body," said Luxembourger Economy Minister Etienne Schneider in a recently released statement.
The move makes Luxembourg the first European nation to offer legal assurance towards the ownership of minerals, water and other resources collected in space-for example on asteroids which experts claim have high density of precious metals such as platinum or rare earths.
"Only the appropriation of space resources is addressed in the law," she said, adding that her country was on the way to becoming Europe’s hub for resources based space exploration.
She noted that the new legislation will be coming into effect in early 2017 and was aimed at protecting upcoming space investments.
Currently two US companies, Deep Space Industries (DSI) and Planetary Resources (PR), are using the tiny EU country as their headquarters, while twenty other companies have shown interest in doing the same.
Luxembourg’s Space Resources initiative aims at fostering future mining of resources from objects located close to Earth and shuttling them back to the planet via specially designed spaceships.
Luxembourg has called for other countries to join its initiative, adding that more and more nations are showing "a concrete interest in collaborating."
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