In December 2015, President Obama signed a new space bill into law: Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. It states that “Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained them, which shall be entitled to all property rights to them, consistent with applicable federal law and existing international obligations.”.
Space mining may sound as a piece of science-fiction. However, the science and technology are already there. The landing on Rosetta comet in 2014 represents a solid proof that we’re already witnessing the dawn of the age of outer space mining.
Today there is a long list of private companies specialized in spaceflight. Some of them had been formed with the essential goal of mining planets and asteroids. For example, Shackletonenergy aims to mine the moon and Planetary Resources the near Earth asteroids.