President Donald Trump is looking to the stars even though much of the country is currently grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, Trump signed off on an executive order called “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources,” which establishes U.S. policy on possessing and utilizing off-Earth resources.

“As America prepares to return humans to the moon and journey on to Mars, this executive order establishes U.S. policy toward the recovery and use of space resources, such as water and certain minerals, in order to encourage the commercial development of space,” Scott Pace, deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the U.S. National Space Council, said in a statement.

The order, which has been in the works for about a year, reflects the United States’ long-held pro-business approach when dealing with space resources. In 1979, the U.S. refused to sign the Moon Treaty that would stipulate non-scientific use of space resources to be governed by an international regulatory framework.

More explicitly, in 2015, Congress passed a law that allowed U.S. companies and citizens to use freely lunar and asteroid resources.

With Trump’s executive order, the U.S. now possesses a clearer vision for future off-Earth mining, without the requirement for further international treaty-like agreements.

The order coincides with NASA’s push for a crewed lunar exploration. In March 2019, in response to Trump’s directive, NASA unveiled the Artemis program's mission to send astronauts to the moon by 2024. A part of the operation would entail establishing a sustainable lunar outpost by 2028, fueled by tapping into lunar resources like water ice that is thought to be plentiful on the polar craters.

The moon, however, is not the final destination for NASA’s grand ambitions, as Mars is next in line. In reaching that goal, the Artemis program will help NASA and its partners learn how to support astronauts in deep space with limited resources for long periods of time.

NASA, though, will have strong competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has its eyes set on the eventual establishment of a sustainable settlement on the Red Planet – and making humanity a multi-planetary species.

Mars, then, would likely be a stepping-stone for future missions to Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan and Jupiter’s moons Io and Europa. Scientists believe that these particular moons of the gas giants have the best chance to harbor alien life in our solar system.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV.

Image: Reuters.