Private U.S. companies and citizens can now obtain, mine, and sell resources from asteroids, the moon, and other celestial bodies. U.S. President Barack Obama recently signed a new law that makes asteroid mining legal. The law is titled U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R.2262).
The law essentially provides the right for space miners to keep whatever resources they mine and extract from nearby asteroids and celestial bodies, which include the Moon and Mars. This development marks a significant change from the previous space legislation, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits signatory nations like Russia and the U.S. to claim ownership of the Moon and other celestial bodies. The new law still excludes the right for a private entity to claim full ownership and sovereignty of celestial bodies, but permits American citizens to own whatever resources they can extract from them.
The new law also addresses three main points: (1) extension of the obligation of the U.S. to the International Space Station until 2024, (2) extension of the current "learning period" for the regulation of privately-owned spacecrafts until 2023, and (3) continued insurance of commercial space launches until 2025. It also requires President Obama to provide an outline on how the U.S. government will handle space resource rights, and submit it in a report to the Congress within 180 days.
This development is seen as a major advantage to the fledgling asteroid mining industry. The law encourages U.S. companies to invest in commercial space exploration and utilization of mined resources. Planetary Resources, a pioneering company in the space mining industry, is one of the private American companies pleased with the new law. In a press release for Planetary Resources, company co-chairman and co-founder Eric Anderson, said that the law "is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history." Anderson adds that the legislation establishes a framework that will encourage further development of space exploration. According to Geek Wire, Planetary Resources has been in the business of creating and testing spacecraft prototypes that can identify and extract materials from near-Earth asteroids. They have a mini-satellite scheduled to be deployed in 2016. Entrepreneurs are keen on the law since there is huge potential for the space mining industry to generate trillions of dollars a year. This is based on the discovery of geologists that some asteroids seem to be abundant with material resources like iron, nickel, ore, platinum, and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found here on Earth.
However, the new law is also currently under scrutiny. It has sparked debate among citizens, lawmakers, and entrepreneurs concerned with the issue of space property rights. One outspoken critic is the director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, Sa'id Mosteshar, who believes that the U.S. does not have the inherent right to harvest and claim ownership of space resources. In a statement he e-mailed to the Motherboard, Mosteshar says "the US government cannot assign to its citizens rights that it does not have".
