WASHINGTON -- The soft-landing by NEAR Shoemaker on Asteroid 433 Eros has caught the attention of a group claiming they own the giant space rock.

Orbital Development of San Diego said they welcome NASAs NEAR spacecraft to Eros, but also want to inform NASA that the group has owned the property since March 3 of last year.

"Its the wild frontier up there," said Gregory Nemitz, founder of Orbital Development. "Since there are no laws governing private property claims in outer space, the first claimant gets ownership of it," he said in a statement.

Nemitz said his group filed a Class D property claim with the Archimedes Institute last year. A "Claims Registry" at the institute has been established to lower the cost of doing business in space by helping to reduce the legal uncertainties associated with a wide variety of space activities.

According to a Web site, the institute has been established to provide an objective and public opportunity for individuals, corporations and other entities to register property claims, liens and judgements regarding space property rights.

The Archimedes Institute is encouraging the formation of new, efficient and equitable legal standards for the sensible development of the high frontier, Nemitz said.

Nemitz said the reason for filing his claim was, as a near-Earth asteroid, Eros "is a potential resource base for construction materials and propellants," he said. Furthermore, in the future, a recreational tourist facility will be built into spaces on Eros cleared by mining, he said.

In its filing with the Archimedes Institute, Orbital Development claimed all of Eros and a volume of space 31 miles (50 kilometers) in altitude into space from every point on the surface of the asteroid.

Lawrence D. Roberts, Archimedes Institute's director, is an academic specializing in issues of space law and policy. Roberts teaches at Fordham University Graduate School of Business in New York.

Nemitz said that the concept for claiming Eros may sound foreign to some, but precedents are well entrenched throughout history.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, of which the U.S. is a signatory, prohibits national governments from making property claims in space.

"So NASA and the NEAR project cannot make a superseding claim for Eros based on NEARs successful landing," Nemitz said.

In the meantime, the welcome mat is out for NEAR Shoemaker, Nemitz said.