Mining the 13,500 Near-Earth Asteroids: Luxembourg Makes Bid for Space-Mining Industry

By Jonalyn Cueto, CP Contributor Monday, June 06, 2016

While NASA has just been planning to launch its first robotic mission to land and gather samples on OSIRIS-REx, Luxembourg is already eyeing to pursue a space mining industry on the asteroid.

According to Ars Technica, on Friday, Luxembourg has announced a bid of 200 million euros to fund the country's spaceresources.lu. The said initiative will see Luxembourg going towards becoming "one of the top 10 space faring countries in the world."

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, alongside Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider, Former ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and former NASA Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden, made the announcement at a press conference. Bettel said that the initiative will bring forth a new law that will legalize the space mining venture. The law is expected to take effect in 2017.

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"Space resources-dedicated licences will be issued under the new law, and government supervision of the activities of operators and regulating their rights and obligations will be ensured by Luxembourg in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty," the economy ministry said in a statement.

Schneider has confirmed they are already in talks with US-based companies Deep Space Industries (DSi) and Planetary Resources Inc, both of which are aiming to set up offices in the Grand Duchy. According to Luxembourgian officials, one or both of these companies could launch missions within three years to survey potential targets for asteroid mining, Reuters repots.

In 2012, Planetary Resources announced its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) for raw materials. To date, 13,500 NEAs have been discovered.

Last month, Luxembourg and DSi announced a partnership to build Prospector-X, a 3U CubeSat to test technologies needed for asteroid mining in low Earth orbit. A 30-meter wide asteroid has been estimated to contain about $50 billion worth of platinum. It is also believed that rare elements such as iridium and palladium could also be extracted.

Dordain is to be an adviser in the bold venture. He has urged entrepreneurs to consider exploiting the rare metals and elements and other valuable resources that could be extracted from space bodies.

Luxembourg has a track record of being highly successful in the satellite services industry as well as in the banking sector. Schneider noted, "In 1985, the government decided to launch the first satellite. We had huge discussions then that nobody would need that kind of satellite or that it could fall from the sky."