Open Lunarians,

 

The beginning of Q4 always finds Open Lunar at full speed. With our research and project cycles timed around major international forums in October and November, this season is when much of our work comes to life. This year was no exception.

 

Following an exceptionally productive year, we launched the Lunar Ledger at IAC in partnership with ispace, Firefly Aerospace, and Astrolab, marking a milestone for transparency and cooperation in lunar activities. We also debuted Between the Craters, our first lunar governance simulation, bringing together forty hand-selected participants to explore how norms, trust, and behaviour might evolve on the Moon in times of crisis.

 

Both initiatives share a common goal: to demonstrate that a values-driven, transparency-first lunar environment is not only possible but essential. The work is just beginning, and we’re energised to continue advancing these projects in collaboration with our global community. We hope you enjoy this deeper look at our activities at IAC — and join us in carrying forward these themes of responsible behaviour and ethical development on our shared celestial neighbour.

 

Rachel Williams, Executive Director

 

 

 

This year, Open Lunar conducted two focused fellowships exploring critical frontiers in lunar governance: Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and Lunar Area Designation. Both fellows examined how shared frameworks and technical standards can shape a cooperative, well-governed lunar environment. Click below to explore the publications and showcase recordings for each area of research. 

Additionally, last month, Open Lunar Fellow Christine Tiballi presented a Showcase of their work. We invite you to watch the recording below!

 

 

 

Open Lunar was proud to be on the ground in Sydney for the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC). For those who couldn’t join us in person, here’s a recap of what we hosted, shared, and learned during an incredible week of global lunar collaboration. 

 

Our delegation included Rachel Williams, Mehak Sarang, Sam Jardine, and Christine Tiballi. Together, we represented Open Lunar across multiple sessions and events, advancing our mission to make lunar development cooperative, transparent, and values-driven.

 

This year, our goals were to:

 

 

At the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney, Open Lunar Foundation partnered with Dark Matter Labs, Secure World Foundation, Berggruen Institute, Climate Cartographics, and the Foresight Institute to co-host Between the Craters — a high-intensity lunar governance simulation set in the year 2038. Over forty participants from government, industry, and academia stepped into roles as space powers, diplomats, scientists, and journalists to navigate a crisis at the fictional Aurora Basin — a volatile, resource-rich region at the lunar South Pole. The scenario tested how governance norms fracture or form under conditions of limited transparency, contested facts, and political pressure.

 

Designed as a “stress test” for future lunar governance, the simulation placed players in an asymmetric environment with imperfect information and conflicting incentives. Core mechanics such as media framing, reputation trackers, and a voluntary Lunar Registry transformed abstract dilemmas into a live experience. As one participant reflected, “The simulation made clear that the Moon’s future will be decided as much through storytelling and negotiation as through engineering.” The exercise revealed the fragility of transparency, the power of coalition-building, and the distorting effects of populism — all themes resonant with real-world space policy today.

 

For Open Lunar and partners, Between the Craters demonstrated the power of immersive policy design to explore the emotional and cognitive pressures of frontier governance. Insights from the exercise will contribute to a forthcoming case study in Dark Matter Labs’ Planetary Compendium (November 2025), and future iterations are already being planned — including a proposed session alongside UN COPUOS. The event underscored Open Lunar’s commitment to creative, inclusive approaches to shaping responsible lunar governance.

 

 

 

At over 1.6 petabytes, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission hosts by far the largest dataset from any planetary science spacecraft ever launched. LRO’s high-resolution lunar imagery and topographic data has been the bedrock for selecting landing sites of most Moon missions launched this century from around the world. But the 2009-launched LRO has gracefully aged now, with limited capabilities left. LRO’s inertial measurement unit has degraded, and it can no longer maintain an orbit that can study the lunar poles from directly above them; its orbit is now inclined. NASA has not approved any LRO successor like LExSO nor does the agency’s FY2026 Presidential budget request ask for any such funding.

 

India’s Chandrayaan 2 orbiter, touting a better radar and 2x the imaging resolution of LRO, has fulfilled a few advanced needs such as helping JAXA’s SLIM spacecraft achieve a precision Moon landing and aiding NASA with Artemis landing site selections. But leveraging of the orbiter’s capabilities has been limited in scope. Moreover, the orbiter is likely to end its nominal operations by the end of the decade, with no immediate replacement planned or announced by ISRO.

 

Commercial companies are entering the landscape to fill some gaps in orbital imagery and mapping, like the upcoming US-based services of Firefly’s Ocula and Blue Origin’s Oasis. While welcome, these are specialized and have relatively limited use cases. The expansive scope of future missions leading up to Moonbases requires having the whole spectrum of orbital datasets, especially for unravelling unknown ground truths about water ice on lunar poles—something the US has been failing at despite it being central to Artemis.

 

Recognizing existing constraints and anticipating future needs, a specialized team of US scientists released a report in 2022 formally recommending NASA to plan replacing the LRO with a cooperative multi-orbiter, commercial-international approach so as to support the increasingly complex and diverse upcoming robotic CLPS and crewed Artemis missions.

 

Open Lunar Foundation’s Lunar Ledger project aims to help catalyze acting on this advice by allowing more mission operators to reliably share technical data at mutual discretion. Six companies have signed up for the Ledger at launch: ispace, Firefly, Astrolab, JAOPS, Dymon, and SpaceData. Similar to how NASA, ESA, and ISRO have been planning coordinated imaging and scientific observations of Venus with their respective upcoming missions, lunar orbiters from around the world could do the same to accelerate progress and improve output while saving costs. 

 

Christine Tiballi, the Lunar Ledger’s Lead, is particularly excited about the possibilities. Orbital data from one entity could enable better rover missions for others, which in turn enhance the quality of orbital datasets themselves that later missions by others still can leverage. “Suddenly competition can become very lucrative cooperation,” says Tiballi.

 

 

In October, Open Lunar issued a Lunar Ledger Press Release, highlighting the launch of the Ledger as an open-access global database designed to coordinate and increase transparency among lunar missions. Announced at the 2025 International Astronautical Congress in Sydney, the initiative debuted with early partners including Firefly Aerospace, ispace, Astrolab, and Japan’s JAOPS and Dymon, marking a milestone toward responsible, cooperative, and peaceful lunar exploration.

 

Open Lunar's Lunar Ledger launch was also featured in Payload and SpaceWatch. The articles highlighted the Lunar Ledger as a shared database for lunar mission operators to exchange information and improve transparency as Moon activity increases. Click below to read more!

We're proud to announce more members of the Lunar Ledger Advisory Board! A diverse group of leaders whose backgrounds span space law, governance, science, research, and hands-on mission experience. Their stewardship is helping to build a resilient, transparent tool shaped by and for the next generation of lunar missions. 

Below, you can read about three of our advisors, and learn more about the full board here.

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