Mining resources on asteroids – what awaits us in the future

This year, it was announced that Luxembourg would become a hub for companies engaged in research and production of space resources. The country’s lawyers are already preparing the necessary legislative framework. This means that private companies registered in Luxembourg will receive legal protection of their ownership rights to all the resources that will be extracted from asteroids. And if the issue moves from the scientific sphere to the legal sphere, then there is already a smell of money and prospects.

Patent wars have already begun for the right to be considered the discoverers of this technology. Private American companies Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have already expressed their desire to engage in the extraction of raw materials on asteroids, which have expressed their interest in the initiative of Luxembourg. It is believed that almost all the metals used in industry, which we extract from the upper layers of the Earth, have an asteroid origin. Modern deposits were formed as a result of the early meteorite bombardment of our planet.

So, sooner or later we will have to go up into space and take resources from the space storeroom. Space activities related to the extraction of resources outside the planet will become as natural a phenomenon as communication, navigation and space sensing of the Earth, without which we can no longer imagine our life. Along with space tourism, mining in space will become a new type of space entrepreneurship.