What does the 2015 US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act allow?
Companies can own the resources they extract from an asteroid
The 2015 US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act was designed to resolve the legal ambiguity created by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. While the treaty forbids claiming sovereignty over the asteroid itself, the act clarifies that companies possess the legal right to own the resources they extract from those bodies. This distinction provides a necessary legal pathway for private investment, encouraging companies to participate in the industry with the assurance that they own the water, metals, or minerals they recover, even if they do not own the rock itself.

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