Methodology
How records are researched, checked and published, and what the site does not claim.
What is in scope
Organizations, missions, government authorizations and laws connected to finding, extracting, processing or selling resources from the Moon, asteroids and Mars. Scientific sample-return missions appear for context when they publish resource findings; they are not counted as resource missions. Coverage grows over time and is not complete.
Asteroid size, spectral class, orbit and round-trip figures on the asteroid targets page come from NASA/JPL's Small-Body Database and NHATS study, not from these records. The site rounds them and does not estimate what any asteroid is worth.
Done versus claimed
The site separates what happened from what was announced. Company statements are recorded as the company's statements. A company source can show what the company said about its own work. It cannot on its own confirm a counterparty's action, a regulator's decision or a physical result beyond what the source shows.
Each organization and mission has an evidence level for each resource, from claimed through commercial delivery. The levels are never interchangeable. See the evidence ladder.
The plans and outcomes page puts each resource mission's first recorded launch plan beside its recorded phase and outcome, using only fields in the published records.
Sources and quotations
Every record cites its sources, each with a verbatim quotation and the fields it supports. Government records, legislation, filings, mission data and peer-reviewed papers can support a record's status; press coverage and directories cannot. Quotations are matched against the source text by machine where the page can be fetched. Where it can't, an AI model may compare the quotation with the source. Each source says which applied, or that its quotation was not machine-matched. A matched quotation shows the words were on the page when accessed. It does not prove the claim, and it does not mean the link still works today.
Review
Records are researched with AI research assistants. A different AI model reviews the cited evidence; a later review may cover selected fields, and a machine quotation check runs separately. "Record checked" is the whole-record source-review date; "Accessed" applies to that individual source; "Independently reviewed" is the latest recorded independent review and can cover selected fields. These dates can legitimately differ. A quotation match does not establish that a mission's status is current. The site owner approves each published set of records as a batch, with two exceptions that publish automatically once that second model has reviewed them against official pages captured that night: a recheck that found no change, and a new dated event attributed to one existing record. A change to a status, date or outcome always waits for the owner. Records that have not passed review stay unpublished: they have no pages and are left out of every figure, search result and download. The coverage page gives only their total.
Dates
Dates keep the precision the source gives (a day, month, quarter, half-year or year) and are never made more precise. Planned dates are shown with the date the plan was announced when that is known, and otherwise say it is not recorded. The date a record was last checked is shown separately. Cancelled plans are shown as history.
Money
Funding rounds, contract values, grant ceilings, acquisition consideration and awards are shown one at a time with their currency and basis. The site does not add them into a single funding total.
Authorizations
The authorization tracker is independent research, not an official registry. A grant date is historical and does not show that an authorization is valid today. A claim that an authorization was the first of its kind is stated as fact only when the regulator says so.
Rechecks
| Record kind | Recheck every |
|---|---|
| Records whose planned window has started or starts within 30 days | 30 days |
| Other records with a planned date | 90 days |
| Missions in a phase that can still move | 90 days |
| Pending authorizations | 90 days |
| Artemis Accords and Moon Agreement party counts | 90 days |
| Everything else | 180 days |
A release cannot go out while any published record with a planned date is more than 30 days past its last check.
News and policy updates
Developments such as contracts, awards, treaty signings, rulemaking notices and UN drafts are added as dated events after the same source review. Each event is dated by the act itself, for example a notice's publication date or a signing date, not by when it was found. The news and events page shows when news sources were last reviewed.
Corrections
Corrections are listed publicly on the corrections page with what each fact said before and what it says now.