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Over the past five years, the issue of using space resources has shifted from asteroid mining to lunar exploration. (credit: ESA) |
by Jeff Foust
Monday 23 November 2020
Five years ago this week, President Obama signed the 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA) into law. The bill, as the name suggests, primarily dealt with commercial launch issues, such as extending the compensation for commercial launch responsibility and the establishment of a class of space flight participants known as “government astronauts” who would be treated differently than their commercial counterparts.
The CSLCA, however, is best known for a section that was once a standalone bill, the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015. That section stated that any US company that mined resources from asteroids or other celestial bodies beyond Earth would be entitled to them, “including owning, owning, transporting, using and selling the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law.”
| “What we are trying to do is make sure that there is a rule of conduct that says that resources can be mined and that we are doing it in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty,” Bridenstine said. |
The law, which guarantees that companies have the rights to the space assets they mined, was perhaps the height of the boom – as it has been – for asteroid mining over the past decade. When the bill became law, two startups, Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, were planning a series of missions near Earth objects for prospecting and later mining, the bill was seen as a step. essential to enable those plans.
Unfortunately, while it may have been an essential step, it wasn’t the only step. Both companies faltered, struggling to raise funds and even launch basic precursor missions. Planetary Resources, on the verge of closing, was acquired in October 2018 by ConsenSys, a blockchain company; after turning to a spatial situational awareness project called TruSat, ConsensSys closed its business earlier this year. Deep Space Industries, which shifted its focus to smallsat components, was acquired by Bradford Space in early 2019 (see “The Asteroid Mining Bubble Has Burst,” The Space Review, January 7, 2019.)
Interest in space resources, however, persists, albeit with a different destination in mind: the Moon. The reinvigoration of lunar exploration through NASA’s Artemis program, as well as the space programs of China and other nations, has brought new attention to lunar resources, especially water ice at the poles that could support future lunar bases and the fuel – literally – the exploration of the Moon and beyond.
US space policy has reflected that interest in space resources and rights to those resources. The Artemis agreements include a section on space resources, including language stating that “the extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation” as defined and prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty. That language has been highlighted, and in some cases criticized, by space law experts (see “The Artemis Agreements Take Shape”, The Space Review, October 26, 2020).
The United States pushed for this view in other ways, such as an executive order this spring that directed government agencies to promote its policy on the use of space resources (see “Putting the White House executive order on space resources in an international “, The Space Review, April 27, 2020).
In September, NASA announced it would purchase lunar regolith obtained from commercial landers – a symbolic purchase (on the order of $ 25,000 for a few hundred grams) intended to set a precedent. “What we are trying to do is make sure there is a rule of conduct that says resources can be mined and that we are doing so in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at an event. in which he announced the plans.
| “I am convinced that ESRIC will also play a key role in this cooperation, this exciting cooperation with the US space agency,” said Fayot. |
But perhaps no country has focused its plans on space resources more than Luxembourg. Around the time the United States enacted the CSLCA, the country embarked on its own space resources initiative, called SpaceResources.lu, seeking to attract companies involved in the space resources industry. Several companies have started operations in Luxembourg and have received investments from the government, which also passed legislation on space resource rights modeled on US law.
However, the asteroid mining boom has failed and the country’s largest political figure involved in the space resource initiative, Deputy Prime Minister Étienne Schneider, stepped down earlier this year. However, the country has maintained an interest in space resources but has now focused on the Moon, as evidenced by being one of the original eight countries to sign the Artemis Accords.
Last week, the country’s space agency, in partnership with ESA, opened the European Space Resources Innovation Center (ESRIC). The center, based at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, will support research on the use of space resources and will also act as a business incubator for companies in the sector.
“ESRIC is well positioned to become an internationally recognized center of competence relating to the use of space resources,” said Claude Meisch, Luxembourg Minister of Higher Education and Research, at an event that officially inaugurates the center.
While officials didn’t go into detail at the research event ESRIC will support, it was clear that interest in space resources was focused more on the Moon than on asteroids, including roles in the Artemis program. Mike Gold, interim associate administrator for international relations and inter-agency at NASA, congratulated Luxembourg officials for establishing the center in pre-recorded remarks, thanking them for signing the Artemis agreements and congratulating the country “on its pioneering work on space resource policy “.
| “We are no longer discussing the fundamental principles of how you can do it within the Outer Space Treaty. Now it has moved more to the question of how to do it, ”Cheney said. |
“Together with ESA, we also plan to develop our partnership with NASA,” said Franz Fayot, Luxembourg’s minister of economy, citing the Artemis agreements. “I am convinced that ESRIC will also play a key role in this cooperation, this stimulating cooperation with the American space agency.”
While the CSLCA didn’t advance the asteroid mining industry, it helped shape the conversation about space resources. “The debate has changed. Developments over the past five years have changed the nature of what we are discussing, “said Thomas Cheney, professor of space governance at The Open University and executive director of the Center for a Spacefaring Civilization, during a webinar last week marking the fifth anniversary of the legislation. “We are no longer discussing the fundamental principles of how you can do it within the Outer Space Treaty. Now it has moved more to the question of how to do it.”
“The discussion is very fluid,” Chris Newman, professor of law and space policy at Northumbria University and a board member of the center, said in the webinar. He argued that there is no longer a belief that the mere use of resources is a form of national appropriation prohibited by the treaty. “What we’re trying to do is use it and mining is a perfectly decent use of an asset.”
But they recognized that the change in whether space resources can be used as they are managed is still ongoing. “We are now moving from talking about purely hypothetical concepts to concrete details of what that entails,” Cheney said. “It will take time. I don’t foresee that it will happen anytime soon. I think we are talking about decades, if not more. ”
The same could be said for asteroid mining itself.
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