Into the Legal Void: Asteroid Mining and the Second Space Age

After millennia of humankind exploiting terrestrial resources, national governments and private enterprises alike are eyeing the skies. There’s evidence of asteroids containing precious metals. Ice on the Moon can be extracted to generate drinking water, oxygen, hydrogen, and helium-3. And Mars has useful minerals, ice, and perhaps even liquid water. All of this requires mining—a pollution-heavy industry. But if activities impacting the environment are being carried out in outer space, what law applies? Or is it all just a . . . legal void? In this episode, ELI’s Cynthia Harris talks to Scot Anderson and Julia La Manna, attorneys with Hogan Lovells in Denver, Colorado, to help us navigate the uncertain terrain of space mining.