Open Lunarians,

 

Last month marked 56 years since the Apollo 11 landing. Moon Day is always a good reminder of how far we’ve come, and how much work is ahead to make sure the future of the Moon is collaborative, fair, and well-governed.

 

This past month we spent time together as a team in Colorado getting clear on our direction and priorities. The Lunar Ledger is now in beta with commercial providers submitting mission information, and we’re heading into a busy stretch with focus and momentum.  Read more below and reach out where you’d like to get involved. Thanks for being in this with us.

 

Rachel Williams, Executive Director

 

 

 

To keep pace with lunar development, the Lunar Ledger is now in closed beta with selected partners. Months of design and a concentrated build sprint have brought our core transparency and collaboration features to life, and we’re now refining them with direct user feedback. Read more in a recent blog post by Christine Tiballi, Lunar Ledger Lead.

 

 

Samuel Jardine represented Open Lunar in Vienna this week at the 2025 COPUOS Plenary, and shares that it was convened under intense institutional and political pressure, shaped by the UN’s worsening liquidity crisis and growing geopolitical gridlock. The budget shortfall has begun to directly impact multilateral functionality—shortened meetings, restricted speaking time, and fewer opportunities for informal diplomacy have all hampered the session’s inclusivity and pace. Yet, within this strained environment, progress did emerge.

 

The newly formalised Action Team on Lunar Activities (ATLAC) and the creation of an expert group on Space Situational Awareness (SSA) signal that targeted, technical cooperation can still move forward. These initiatives—alongside calls for increased non-state actor inclusion—reinforce that UNCOPUOS remains a vital space for global governance, even as its structures are tested. As lunar and orbital activities accelerate, the stakes for resourcing, reforming, and strengthening this multilateral forum have never been higher.

 

 

 

Open Lunar’s core team gathered in Telluride, Colorado, in July for a focused and energising retreat. We aligned on mission and fundraising strategy, advanced key projects like the Lunar Ledger, evaluated our existing projects and aligned on 2026 project investment. We're feeling clear and motivated as we head into a big season of delivery and momentum-building.

 

 

NASA’s Apollo missions helped us confirm that our celestial companion had a fiery origin tied to Earth. Soviet Luna missions were the world’s first robotic sample return missions, establishing the modern approach that fetching planetary material to Earth generates scientific results for decades. India’s Chandrayaan 1 orbiter discovered water on the Moon, revealing a dynamic lunar environment and catalyzing global interest in lunar exploration. Japan’s SELENE orbiter extensively mapped the Moon and found openings to long underground lava tubes. Samples fetched by China’s Chang’e 5 mission confirmed that the Moon was volcanically active and thermally complex geologically recently. And Chang’e 6 transformed our understanding of how our Moon evolved thanks to the first ever farside lunar samples.

 

These are profound discoveries that tie back to the history of Earth and potentially its water. The scientific exploration of our Moon has been a microcosm of what humans globally are cumulatively capable of. And it promises more still as a unique platform for radio cosmology, solar sciences, and unraveling the complex history of our Solar System.

 

But with increasing Moon missions, harsh lunar dust that can go orbital, congestion and lack of regulation in lunar orbit, the lunar south pole becoming a region of convergence and potential contest for technology, mining, infrastructure, and habitat development, and the changing geopolitical environment on Earth, our Moon’s scientific value as an extraordinarily unique time capsule could become increasingly inaccessible and gated.

 

That’s why the non-profit Lunar Policy Platform (LPP), with support from the Open Lunar Foundation, consulted key scientific organizations like COSPAR and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as well as universities and research centers worldwide to understand nuances of the situation. In the ensuing guide, LPP finds that because science doesn’t exist in a vacuum, the intersection of national, commercial, technological, and strategic objectives means there’s no single way forward to accommodate the scientific pursuits of all. In its key takeaways from the guide, LPP notes a concluding remark pertinent to preserving lunar science for all:

 

 

The project is open to feedback from all stakeholders until August 17th.

You're Invited: Lunar Information Sharing 101 

 

 

We live in a brand new era for lunar activities. With over 100 payloads from around the globe being planned to visit the Moon by 2030, our closest natural satellite will soon see a flurry of activities like never before. As the number of lunar missions increases, both in orbit and on the surface, so does the need to share information about them.

 

To help streamline and enhance information sharing, the Lunar Policy Platform (LPP), with funding from the Open Lunar Foundation, has developed a unique Lunar Information Sharing 101 (LIS 101).The LIS 101 outlines core elements, guiding principles and streamlined practices for lunar information sharing, based upon common ground identified during 8 months of consultations with over 40 stakeholders.

 

Join LPP for this virtual event, where the LPP team will present a final draft of the LIS 101 for awareness and discussion with the community

 

We are pleased to introduce two new Open Lunar Affiliates: Melodie Yashar, who works in space infrastructure and construction technologies, and Thomas González Roberts, incoming Assistant Professor of International Affairs and Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Read their full quotes by clicking below!

 

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