Redmond-based Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has named Brian Israel as General Counsel. Mr. Israel will oversee the legal, regulatory, and compliance functions for the company, its parent, and Planetary Resources Luxembourg. The company’s vision is to expand humanity’s economic sphere of influence into the Solar System by providing resources for people and products in space, with a near-term goal of identification, extraction, and refinement of water from near-Earth asteroids.
Mr. Israel joins Planetary Resources from the United States Department of State, where he served in the Office of the Legal Adviser since 2009. For more than five years, Mr. Israel was the lead lawyer responsible interpreting and applying the United States’ international legal obligations to contemporary and contemplated commercial space activities. He led the U.S. Government’s approach to the international legal dimensions of space resource utilization at home and abroad, including as United States Representative to the Legal Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space from 2012 to 2016. Beyond the space domain, Mr. Israel brings deep expertise in the legal dimensions of advanced technology development and regulation. He has published and lectured on public international law, space law, the law of the sea, environmental law, the Arctic, intellectual property law, and innovation policy in the United States, Canada, and Japan.
Chris Lewicki, President and CEO, Planetary Resources, Inc., said, “Brian’s extensive experience and global perspective are unique strategic assets as our operations become increasingly multinational. Our investors are multinational. We now have operations in Luxembourg. And our customer base will be global. Brian is a creative and strategic thinker, and he is uniquely placed to help Planetary Resources achieve its mission.”
Brian Israel said, “I’m thrilled to join this extraordinary team, which has “the right stuff” to make the audacious mission of Planetary Resources a reality. The idea of harnessing the resources of outer space predates spaceflight itself. But path-breaking innovation requires more than an idea. It is about execution. This team knows how to execute.”
About Planetary Resources, Inc.
Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, was founded in 2009 by Eric Anderson, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis and Chris Lewicki. The company’s vision is to establish a new paradigm for resource utilization that will bring the Solar System within humanity’s economic sphere of influence. The pathway in identifying the most commercially viable near-Earth water-rich asteroids has led to the development of multiple transformative technologies that are applicable to global markets, including the agriculture, oil & gas, mining and insurance industries.
Planetary Resources is financed by industry-launching visionaries who are committed to expanding the world’s resource base so humanity can continue to grow and prosper for centuries to come. Some of the company’s partners and advisors include 3D Systems, the Bechtel Corporation and Analytical Graphics Incorporated; Sara Seager, Ph.D., professor of Planetary Science & Physics at MIT and TED fellow; Dante Lauretta, Ph.D., professor of Planetary Science at the University of Arizona and principal investigator of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission; Members of the company’s technical staff have worked on every recent U.S. Mars lander including Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, and include other key non-aerospace and safety-critical disciplines.
