SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Planetary Resources, Inc., a company that would like to be known for asteroid mining at some point in the future, has signed a funding agreement with the government of Luxembourg [planetaryresources.com]:

Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the banking institution Société Nationale de Crédit et d'Investissement (SNCI). This partnership with Luxembourg's SpaceResources.lu [public.lu] initiative will advance technologies and lines of business toward the exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids. Just as Luxembourg accelerated the satellite communications industry through its investments, this funding for Planetary Resources Luxembourg will accelerate the space resources industry.

Also at SpaceNews [spacenews.com] and Mining.com [mining.com]:

[Last] month, the government reached an agreement with another US-based company [mining.com], Deep Space Industries, which will be conducting missions to prospect for water and minerals in outer space. Both parties are currently developing Prospector-X, a small and experimental spacecraft [deepspaceindustries.com] that test technologies for prospecting and mining near Earth asteroids after 2020.

Luxembourg's administration is also working on a legal frame [public.lu] for exploiting space resources so that private companies can be entitled to the resources they mine from asteroids, but not to own the celestial bodies themselves.

Previously: Planetary Resources Finally Deploys First Spacecraft After Explosive Setback [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission