As we close out 2025, I’ve been reflecting on what really moved Open Lunar forward this year. It wasn’t just the projects we launched, or the frameworks we developed, the engagements we showed up for, or the systems we advanced.
It was the people behind the mission.It was our team, our board, our donors, our advisors, our partners, and our community— who quietly and consistently generated the momentum for cooperative lunar impact.
This email is simply a thank-you. And an invitation to help us keep going.
And that’s just a glimpse. With a core team of three full-time staff and 2–3 part-time contractors, we’re extraordinarily proud of what this community made possible.
This year's progress wouldn't be possible without the talented individuals on our team. I'm pleased to share more about the people behind the work below.
Rae Smith-Cohn — joined us in early 2025 and immediately became the heartbeat of Open Lunar operations. She has brought clarity, organization, and a sense of calm momentum across every workflow, and has been enabling every success we have had this year.
Mehak Sarang — joined in early 2025 and immediately began shaping the direction of our technical and policy programs. She’s been integrating our projects — especially the Lunar Ledger — into commercial pathways, stewarding partnerships with clarity, and ensuring our work truly lands in the world.
Samuel Jardine— carried Open Lunar’s flag through closed-door diplomatic talks, UN engagements, and ITU forums, and debuted our first experiential tabletopping simulation. He has curated and nurtured stakeholder relationships for the Lunar Ledger with exceptional skill, drawing on his geopolitical background to guide engagement and strategy.
Christine Tiballi— joined in January and spent the year building the Designated Lunar Areas Framework, a promising governance tool. She also stewarded the Ledger through its build and pushed it into its next important stage of development through the end of 2025.
Chelsea Robinson - Open Lunar co-founder who continues to keep a finger on the pulse of our work. She advises our strategic direction, challenges our assumptions, and regularly drops wisdom that shapes our trajectory.
Jatan Mehta — Joined us in 2025 to bring deep technical clarity to our communications. He has been digesting and translating complex material for our newsletter and blog, making clear connections between industry trends and the work that’s needed. (P.S. — subscribe to Moon Monday.)
Open Lunar Foundation Board— who provided the governance backbone behind every project we delivered. From fundraising strategy to program oversight to international positioning, they kept Open Lunar grounded, aligned, and growing. We are deeply grateful for an active, thoughtful board that shows up for us every step of the way.
Joshua Vial — joined the Ledger effort to bring our research into form. He built the Ledger platform and transformed it from technical documents into a living product with real actors exchanging real data.
Tanja Masson-Zwaan— one of our trusted board members, who advocated on behalf of Open Lunar across multiple fora, moderated panels, and helped us launch the Lunar Ledger on the global stage. Her wisdom shapes our work more than anyone sees.
Chris Johnson — a long-time friend of Open Lunar who helped us relaunch the Lunar Policy Handbook and co-host this year’s tabletopping exercises.
Louis Burtz— an Open Lunar affiliate who brought his company JAOPS in as one of the very first Lunar Ledger partners and continues to model what real commercial transparency looks like. He also has excellent taste in socks (picture above).
Kevin Hubbard — a long-time collaborator exploring a novel dust-monitoring program with us — one that could meaningfully improve coordination and reduce risk on the lunar surface. His governance curiosity and engineering rigor push a new ideas into lunar environmental stewardship.
Ledger Advisory Board— whose guidance on verification pathways, data stewardship, multilateral trust-building, and technical constraints shaped the Ledger’s evolution this year. They’ve ensured it remains a neutral and globally useful transparency utility.
Our Commercial Partners: Our commercial partners have been essential in advancing this work. Thank you to Firefly Aerospace, Astrolab, ispace inc., JAOPS, Dymon, Honeybee Robotics, KSAT, and many others whose early engagement, feedback, and collaboration have strengthened the Lunar Ledger and the broader ecosystem we’re building together.
And to our donors — especially our backbone donors — thank you.
None of this would exist without you. Our entire vision, and the impact we are now delivering globally, is only possible because of your belief in stewardship, transparency, and the long arc of planetary governance.
If you’re reading this, you’re part of the ecosystem that makes stewardship possible.
This work matters more now than ever.
2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. Lunar activity is accelerating. Coordination challenges are becoming more visible. And Open Lunar is increasingly being asked to show up with clarity, tools, and frameworks that lower risk and build trust.
We can only do that because of the community that believes this work matters.
Join our Donor Circle to Create Generational and Interplanetary Impact.
If Open Lunar’s progress this year resonated with you, we’d be deeply grateful if you would consider making a year-end contribution.
Private, philanthropic funding is what allows us to remain neutral, transparent, and values-driven. It’s what enables us to build shared utilities, steward open data, convene global stakeholders, and show up in the rooms where governance actually takes shape.
Your contribution directly supports the people and projects you just read about — and accelerates the work we’ll deliver in 2026: from Lunar Ledger growth, to governance tools, to international coordination, to real-world transparency utilities.
Thank you for being part of this experiment in open, cooperative lunar governance. We’re excited for what we’ll build together in 2026.
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Open Lunar Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, with a mission to enable a peaceful, cooperative presence on the Moon that benefits all life. Consider making a gift to support Open Lunar's work!
