Humans may start exploring space soon; US legalises Asteroids mining

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi/New York: Here is some good news for companies hoping to mine space-rocks for their valuable ores! The US Congress has signed off on a bill to legalise space mining.

US President Barack Obama has signed a major law called the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act that will allow US citizens to obtain their own asteroids and mine resources out of them.

Meteorites - chunks that survive and fall to earth after asteroids disintegrate in the atmosphere - yield significant amounts of precious metals like platinum, rhodium, iridium, rhenium, osmium, ruthenium, palladium, germanium and gold.

Planetary Resources estimates some platinum-rich asteroids just 500 meters across could contain more than the entire known reserves of platinum group metals.

Studies based on observation and meteorites suggest space is even richer in iron ore.