Asteroid Mining Law of Luxembourg will take effect on 1st August 2017

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The Parliament of Luxembourg has voted in the approval of an asteroid mining law. It would provide ownership to the companies in order to extract from the celestial bodies. This specific European country had started working on this bill in the year 2016 and needed to pass this bill at the beginning of the current year. The bill took a considerable amount of time to finalize things, but now they were able to get a unanimous vote and it has been scheduled to take effect from 1^st August 2017. The newly approved law of Luxembourg is much similar to the one signed in 2015 by the former U.S President Obama and it offered mining companies in getting the right to keep their loot. Both of them will get the advantage of a loophole in the Outer Space Treaty of the UN.

It indicates that nations will not be able to claim and occupy the moon and other celestial bodies. They just offer companies to extract minerals, but it will not give ownership of asteroids to the companies. Despite the U.S version, the major stakeholders of the company will not need to be based in Luxembourg to get a benefit of protection; they just need to have an office in the country. Any interested space corporation operating from the Grand Duchy should have a written permission from the country and shouldn’t have major shareholders who collect money from terrorist organizations or groups. The Luxembourg developed its first big space bet in 1985 after supporting the first European satellite operator and later it became the biggest in the world.