In accord with the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967, which prohibits any countries or individuals from claiming ownership of celestial bodies, the new law specifies that only resources obtained from these objects, not the worlds themselves, can be privately owned.
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Companies are now working on developing methods to extract gold, platinum and other metals from asteroids in orbit around the Earth.
The approval of a commercial space act by Congress means private companies are now authorized to legally mine materials from the moon, asteroids and other celestial bodies in space.
“This is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history”. As well as giving the right to mine asteroids, it extends America’s commitment to the International Space Station and makes it easier for to run a private space startup company. Effectively an extension of capitalism into space, the bill is one of the few during Obama’s presidency that received widespread support from the GOP, because apparently, nothing screams bipartisanship like asteroid mining.
“The idea that American companies can on the basis of domestic laws alone systematically exploit mineral resources in space, despite huge environmental risks, really amounts to the audacity of greed”, Gbenga Oduntan, an global law expert at the University of Kent, wrote in an op-ed for The Conversation.
This law enables the continuous leadership and prosperity of the United State in space, said Peter Marquez, Vice President of Global Engagement, Planetary Resources, Inc.
He also said that passing of this legislation has given rise to the same supportive framework that created the great economies of history. As per the treaty, any contents from natural space resources will be protected from commercial harvesting, Jakhu said.
Critics say citing free market truisms and quibbling over the definition of words is a distraction from the new legislation’s obvious contradiction of the intent of previously global agreements.
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A company will own any materials they extract from a piece of space rock but it will not actually own it.
