Étienne Schneider was named winner of the “government leader of the year (civil)” at the Awards for Excellence & Innovation in Washington on 19 December, laureates of which were selected through an open nomination process ending with a reader poll.

Étienne Schneider “has become the biggest proponent of the emerging space resources industry among government officials in any country,” the specialist space industry publication wrote on its website.

“Space News” described how the SpaceResources.lu initiative had been established under Schneider’s leadership in 2016, creating a “friendly legal regime”.

Since then a handful of companies have moved to or created subsidiaries in Luxembourg, including Deep Space Industries, and Planetary Resources, from the US, and ispace from Japan.

Luxembourg passed a space mining law defining rights to the minerals being mined on near-Earth objects and work is underway to create a national space agency to serve as a public-private partnership with venture capital funds to invest in more space companies.

The publication acknowledged that the journey has not been without challenges, citing Schneider’s speech at the NewSpace Europe conference in Luxembourg last November where he said that people thought he had gone mad when he launched the space mining initiative. But it said Schneider was playing the long game.

The other winners

Other winners include Nasa’s Jason Crusan for “unsung hero of the year”, Kymeta for “startup of the year”, International Launch Services, for “turnaround of the year”, Mission 1 for “breakthrough of the year”, Maxar Technologies for “deal of the year”, Space Wing for “government agency of the year”, General John Hyten at US Stratcom, for “government leader of the year (military), SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell for “corporate leader of the year”, SpaceX for “company of the year”.

The full list of finalists and runners up can be found here.