The SPACE Act allows US citizens and companies to commercially exploit resources found on asteroids, overturning the idea that space is public domain. Some asteroids contain valuable resources like platinum, making asteroid mining a potentially lucrative industry. The term asteroid means “star-shaped” in Greek, and NASA challenges trainees to find errors in the movie Armageddon. A large asteroid impact 65 million years ago is believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Thanks to the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act (SPACE), signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015, any US company – or citizen, for that matter – can use the resources discovered on asteroids for their own commercial gain. The law upends the long-standing notion that space is a public domain where no one can claim ownership. And if you’re wondering if asteroids contain anything worthwhile, consider the fact that some of them boast platinum cores worth trillions of US dollars. If asteroid mining technology becomes a reality, it would make some forward-thinking entrepreneurs very rich indeed.
Looking for the stars:
Coined in the early 1800s, the word asteroid means “star-shaped” in Greek.
There are so many factual errors in the 1998 asteroid film Armageddon that NASA challenges management trainees to find as many as possible.
Scientists believe a large asteroid hit Earth 65 million years ago, setting off a chain reaction that wiped out the dinosaurs.
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