In 2015, President Obama promulgated a law on space mining activity. Under the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act , US companies are now allowed to extract raw materials on planets, moons, and other celestial bodies. This law guarantees companies the ownership of the materials they extract.
The Space Act came into effect following the lobbying of a group of companies that decided to focus their activities on space mining. They are named after Moon Express, Planetary Resources, and Deep Space Industries. They design spacecraft and robots for uninhabited mining missions and benefit from well-stocked investors. Larry Page, co-founder of Google and a billionaire, is one of the financiers of Planetary Resources.
"An asteroid a hundred meters in diameter can shelter for billions of euros of precious metals."
Moon Express is racing in the lead. In 2016, the US administration granted its' permission to proceed with the first commercial moon landing. This moon exploration mission is scheduled for 2017. Within a decade, Moon Express wants to be able to bring raw materials back to earth and sell them.
The only "constitution" that pertains to outer space is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. This text is forbidden to countries outside the United States. The United States Space Act goes against this treaty. How can an State grants ownership of an asteroid's resources to a company if he does not own the it?
Russia has affirmed that all space resources fall under the non-appropriation clause and has qualified the US law as unacceptable.