The Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado held the Ninth Joint Meeting of the Space Resources Roundtable and the Planetary & Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium on 12-15 June. For the first time, representatives from the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy and FNR participated in the annual conference. The idea was to promote the Luxembourgish spaceresources.lu initiative and to showcase the efforts of building a space development industry supported by research and innovation in Luxembourg.
This year the conference had over 100 participants from universities, industry, and space agencies involved in all aspects of the space resources value chain. The programme was packed with presentations on the state-of-the-art in in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). There were sessions on the latest developments in space resources, the economics, business and policy aspects of ISRU, and updates on space manufacturing and processing technologies. In addition to the presentations there were discussion and poster sessions.
From the feedback of the participants to the Luxembourgish delegation, it’s clear that Luxembourg is a major driver in the sudden surge of interest in space mining due to its Space Resource Initiative.
The Luxembourg delegation, with Andreea Monnat (Head of Innovation) representing the FNR, also visited the Colorado School of Mines, Center for Space Resources where the university has begun one of the world’s first graduate degrees in the area of space resources. The delegation met with the professors and students while visiting laboratories conducting innovative research in ISRU and spoke about potential exchanges in research and innovation.
The presentations from the various workshops are available for download.
