Deep space mine: Luxembourg Government partners with Deep Space Industries in space mining

The asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries has announced a partnership with the Luxembourg Government and the Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI), the national banking institution in Luxembourg, to develop a  resource mining programme in space.

The partnership will help fund their R&D projects to use existing technology  and develop it to be able to mine asteroids in space and create a supply chain of space commodities.

A low Earth orbit technology demonstration mission, testing the company’s pioneering deep space technology, will be the first project to come out of the collaboration.

Dubbed Prospector – X, the project will be crucial to the success and development of the deep space programme going forward. Following the newly formed European headquarters in Luxembourg, Deep Space Industries will support the construction of the Prospector – X spacecraft with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust at the University of Luxembourg as well as the company’s international and American partners.

Daniel Faber, CEO of Deep Space Industries believes the partnership with Luxembourg on this particular project will pave the way for the development of a space mining economy, citing the enthusiasm and support as the crucial factors in the project’s expansion.

“We have been impressed by Luxembourg’s tangible actions to lead the creation of an asteroid resource economy. The opportunity to partner with Luxembourg on Prospect-X allows a number of the key technologies for cosr0effective deep space operations to be rapidly flight-tested in advance of more complex missions,” he said.

Prospector-X is not the only victory for Deep Space Industries, just recently the company fielded a successful on-orbit experiment demonstrating the significance (and functionality) of autonomous operations in space resource mining.

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