Glossary

Terms

• Space resources — the legal term used in national statutes and at the United Nations for abiotic material found in outer space, including water and minerals. "Space mining" is the everyday term for activities aimed at recovering them.
• ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) — using material found at the destination (regolith, ice, atmosphere) instead of launching it from Earth: making oxygen, water, propellant, metals, or building material.
• Regolith — the loose layer of dust, broken rock, and soil covering the Moon, asteroids, and Mars.
• Water ice (lunar polar) — ice believed to be trapped in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles; the most discussed near-term lunar resource because it can supply drinking water, oxygen, and rocket propellant.
• Helium-3 — a rare, light helium isotope implanted in lunar regolith by the solar wind. Proposed uses include cryogenic cooling for quantum computers and, speculatively, fusion fuel.
• Platinum-group metals (PGMs) — platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium; the main stated target of metal-asteroid prospecting companies.
• Near-Earth asteroid (NEA) — an asteroid whose orbit brings it close to Earth's; the bodies most asteroid-resource companies target because they are the easiest to reach.
• Lander / rover / payload — a lander delivers hardware to a surface; a rover moves on it; a payload is an instrument or package carried by someone else's spacecraft. A payload's operator and the lander's operator are recorded separately.
• Mission authorization — a government's permission for a company or person under its jurisdiction (for example, one registered or operating in its territory) to conduct a specific space activity. It is how a state, as the "appropriate State Party", meets its treaty duty to authorize and supervise non-governmental space activity.
• Space resources permit — a mission authorization issued under a national law written specifically for resource activities (for example Japan's and Luxembourg's).
• Payload review — a U.S. interagency review, led by the FAA, of a payload that is not otherwise licensed. A favorable determination is not a mining license.
• Government purchase contract — a government agreement to buy a resource or sample from a company (for example NASA's 2020 lunar regolith purchase contracts; the dataset does not document completed purchases). Recorded as a contract event, not an authorization: it makes the government a customer, not a regulator.

Evidence ladder (never interchangeable)

The dataset records how far along the ladder an organization or mission has actually gone, based on primary evidence, not on what it says it will do. The site shows these seven steps, in this order, with these names. Each record gets the highest step its evidence supports for each resource.

1. Claimed (says it will) — the organization says it intends to find, use or sell the resource. A claim alone moves nothing up the ladder. Tests on Earth with simulated soil stay at this step.
2. Targeted (mission aimed at it; on an organization's page, work aimed at it) — a specific mission or instrument has the resource as a stated objective but has not reported measuring it. Planned missions sit here, and so does a mission that flew without reporting a measurement.
3. Detected (seen remotely) — the resource was inferred from orbit, from Earth or from an impact plume (for example, water signatures in lunar polar craters).
4. Prospected (measured on site) — measurements on or near the body located or characterized the resource (drills, neutron spectrometers, mass spectrometers, rovers).
5. Sampled (material collected) — material was gathered and analyzed in place or brought to Earth, mainly for science. Government sample-return missions are recorded here, not as mining.
6. Processing demo (extraction demo) — a small-scale test separated a usable product from local material on another body (for example, producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere).
7. Commercial delivery (sold or delivered) — a resource recovered from another body was sold or delivered on commercial terms. No record in this dataset has reached this step. A claim of commercial extraction stays unpublished until a separate evidence review accepts it. Holding the claim back is not proof that the claim is false.

The home page counts organizations by their highest step; mission records are counted separately on the status page, so the two totals differ.

How status words are used

Mission phases, as shown in the Phase column and on each mission page:

• Announced — the organization has said it will fly the mission. Nothing more.
• In development — a primary source shows hardware, a contract or a task order in work, but no booked flight.
• Manifested — a primary record shows it booked on a specific launch or lander.
• Launched — it has left Earth, per mission or agency records.
• In transit — launched and on its way to its target.
• At target — arrived in orbit around, or next to, its target body.
• Surface operations — landed and working on the surface.
• Ended — the mission is over, whatever its result; the outcome says how it went.
• Cancelled — stopped before flight. Former plans stay on the record as history.
• Stalled — not flown, not booked on a flight, and no dated activity by the operator for 24 months or more.

Mission outcomes:

• Success, Partial and Failure — recorded from a post-mission statement. The basis is shown beside the outcome: operator statement, agency statement, or inferred by this dataset where neither says it directly.
• Unknown — no post-mission statement was found.
• Not applicable — the mission has not reached a point where it can have an outcome.

Law and policy status:

• In force — binding and currently in effect.
• Adopted, not in force — adopted but not yet in effect.
• Non-binding, in effect — a political commitment or set of principles that applies but creates no legal obligation (for example, the Artemis Accords).
• Proposed — under discussion, or a body set up to draft something; nothing has been adopted. A working group shows the year it was established.
• Superseded and Repealed — no longer in effect. They stay listed as history and are not counted as a country's current laws.

What "space mining" legally means today

This dataset distinguishes national authorization acts, resource-ownership laws, and international treaty obligations. Its authorization tracker is independent research.

• The treaty baseline. Under the Outer Space Treaty, no country may make the Moon or any other celestial body its own, whether by claiming it, using or occupying it, or any other means (Article II). Article VI assigns states responsibility for national space activities and requires authorization and continuing supervision of non-governmental activities by the "appropriate State Party to the Treaty". The treaty wording does not define that responsibility simply by an operator's home country. (Outer Space Treaty (1967), Article VI quotation in the reviewed record)
• Who has authorized resource activity. Japan has granted two permissions under its 2021 Space Resources Act, both to ispace, for Mission 1 (2022) and Mission 2 (2024). Luxembourg granted one authorization under its 2017 law to ispace Europe, for the Tenacious rover (2024). The U.S. case documented in this dataset is Moon Express's 2016 FAA-led payload review, which was not a resource permit. (Japan Space Resources Act permit to ispace for HAKUTO-R Mission 1 (2022), Japan Space Resources Act permit to ispace for Mission 2 (RESILIENCE) (2024), Luxembourg space resources mission authorisation to ispace EUROPE S.A. for the TENACIOUS micro-rover (2024), FAA-led interagency payload review: Moon Express MX-1E (2016))
• Ownership of what is extracted. The U.S. (2015) and Japanese (2021) laws say operators may own the resources they extract, and Luxembourg's 2017 law says space resources can be owned. The United Arab Emirates replaced its 2019 space law with Federal Decree-Law No. 46 of 2023, which keeps a permit system for resource activities and leaves the conditions to a Cabinet resolution; the decree-law itself states no ownership rule, and this dataset has not verified the current resolution's text. These laws deal with ownership of extracted material, not of territory. (U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, Title IV (Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015), Luxembourg Law of 20 July 2017 on the exploration and use of space resources, Japan: Act on the Promotion of Business Activities Related to the Exploration and Development of Space Resources (Act No. 83 of 2021), UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 46 of 2023 Concerning the Regulation of the Space Sector)
• International positions. The Artemis Accords, with 78 signatories as of 2026-10-28, affirm that extracting space resources does not, by itself, count as the national appropriation that Article II of the Outer Space Treaty forbids. The Moon Agreement, with 17 parties as of 2026-10-05, instead declares the Moon and its natural resources the "common heritage of mankind", and applies the same rules to the other bodies of the solar system besides Earth. (Artemis Accords (2020), Moon Agreement (1979))
• Work in progress at the UN. A UN working group (COPUOS Legal Subcommittee) circulated a consolidated draft of non-binding principles, prepared by its chair and vice-chair, in July 2026; nothing has been adopted, and finalization is targeted for 2027. (UN COPUOS Legal Subcommittee Working Group on Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities (draft initial recommended principles))
• What this dataset documents. The two ispace missions associated with the three resource-specific authorizations in this dataset ended in failed landings. In the records checked through 2026-11-10, the dataset contains no confirmed commercial resource delivery. This is a bounded research finding, not proof of global absence. Scientific sample collection and resource-processing demonstrations have occurred.

The word the regulator uses matters: Japan grants a permission (許可, rendered "license" in the government's English translation), Luxembourg an authorization (agrément), and the U.S. act recorded here is a favorable payload determination.