Luxembourg deputy prime minister Etienne Schneider (LSAP) and his Belgian counterpart, Didier Reynders, inked the joint declaration on Wednesday in Brussels.

The agreement adds another ally in driving the agenda of Luxembourg SpaceResources, an initiative launched in 2016 aimed at creating an ecosystem for the exploitation of space resources such as water, aluminium and cobalt. The use of these and other space resources is considered critical for sustainable lunar exploration and even establishing human habitats in space.

Since 2016, Luxembourg has passed a law guaranteeing companies ownership of what they extract from celestial bodies, it has attracted around 20 newspace companies and, in September 2018, the economy ministry launched the Luxembourg Space Agency.

Alliance of 7

Belgium is the seventh country to sign such an agreement with Luxembourg for an international framework on the exploitation of space resources, after China, Japan, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. It has a tradition of legal, technical and economic expertise in the space sector and signed five UN space treaties, the government said in a press release.

“The space economy is developing rapidly, and it is important to start working now on international rules that will allow the enormous potential of this sector to be fully and orderly realised,” Belgium deputy prime minister Didier Reynders said, adding: “Because of our strong support for multilateralism, we support an approach that reconciles individual rights with the collective interest of humanity.”

The announcement comes a day after the European Space Agency announced it signed a one-year contract with European aerospace company ArianeGroup to begin mining for water and oxygen on the moon by 2025.