Methodology

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.

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 activity ladder.

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, or checked by hand and labeled as such. 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. Before a record can be published, a different AI model reopens its sources and checks each claim, and a machine quotation check runs separately. The site owner approves each published set of records as a batch. Records that have not passed review stay unpublished and are not counted anywhere on the site.

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

A release cannot go out while any published record with a planned date is more than 30 days past its last check.

Corrections

Corrections are listed publicly on the corrections page with what changed and why.