Luxembourg, Deep Space Industries Fund Testing of Asteroid Mining Technology

In a press release by the Luxembourg Ministry of Economy they said that Société Nationale de Crédit et d'Investissement" (SNCI) and Deep Space Industries (DSI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support the recently launched Luxembourg Space Sources project. This projects aims to define the framework in the future exploration of NEOs of Near Earth Objects including asteroids.

It is one of the first initiatives to explore the possibility of asteroid mining from outer space. According to Space Resources "Luxembourg is the first European country to announce its intention to set out a formal legal framework which ensures, that private operators, working in space, can be confident about their rights to the resources they extract, i.e. rare minerals from asteroids." They said that the framework will comply with the international law and they are willing to cooperate with other countries who are also interested in the space mining industry.

They believe that the resources from space should be open for all.

Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy said, "Our promising cooperation with DSI within the space resources initiative demonstrates the strong commitment of the Luxembourg Government to support the exploration and future commercial use of space resources."

According to TechCrunch, the MoU also paved the way for the funding of the Deep Space Industries' first spacecraft called Prospector-X, a small spacecraft which will be used to identify prospective Near Earth Objects.

Asteroid mining will require different type of technology since minerals harvested could be used both in space and on Earth and separate machines are needed to be able to do both.

The first part of asteroid mining technology was already being studied by DSI by focusing on extracting water from asteroids. But anything that has to do with the outer space will not be easy. Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of the Board, DSI said "It's almost as if we were drilling for the first oil and we were developing the internal combustion engine."

The asteroid mining technology will take years of rigorous testing and millions in funding before it could harvest results. But Deep Space Industries is confident that if they are successful in developing this ambitious technology, they can sell the system and earn from it on top of the harvests from asteroids.