On August 23, hours before a planned launch from Wenchang, China postponed its Chang'e-7 mission. The China Manned Space Agency said the spacecraft did not meet launch conditions and could not fly during its planned window this year, a decision attributed to a comprehensive assessment weighing prudence and reliability. Reporting has pointed to poor weather from Tropical Depression Narra as a likely immediate factor. China has not yet confirmed whether it will seek another opportunity in 2026 or move the mission into 2027.
Chang'e-7 is one of the most ambitious lunar missions on the calendar. It was built to explore permanently shadowed craters and survey resources at the lunar south pole, and it would have been among the first missions to directly probe for water ice there. It also carries instruments from international partners, including Thailand's NARIT and the International Lunar Observatory Association, a reminder that even nationally led missions increasingly depend on cooperation across borders.
Chang'e-7 is one of more than four hundred lunar missions that agencies and companies expect to send toward the same narrow band of south polar terrain over the next two decades. As Vic Paulson and Sam Jardine both write in this issue, the ground that makes that region valuable is scarce, and the activity converging on it will need coordination that does not yet exist.
That is the work we are here to do. Thank you for being part of it.
Blog Posts
Geology Writes the Rules
On the lunar south pole, geology is not just an engineering constraint. It decides which governance rules can exist at all. Vic Paulson shows how landing, living, and mining each demand different terrain, and how the ground that serves one disqualifies another. No single site is favorable for all three, so what becomes scarce is proximity: how tightly a mission can pack the complementary sites it needs. The piece closes on a governance question that follows directly from the terrain, namely that the unit of allocation should be a bounded set of complementary ground sized to a mission, not a single point or claim.
Falling Falcons: Coordination, Contamination, and the Case for a Public Record
A spent Falcon 9 upper stage striking the Moon exposes a wider gap: objects beyond Earth orbit are not systematically tracked, and there is no reliable shared record of what operators leave behind. Sam Jardine traces why this matters as hundreds of planned missions converge on a handful of sensitive polar sites, where descent plumes and contamination cross far beyond any single landing zone. The argument lands on a practical fix. A public record of what was deposited, where, and by whom serves both collision avoidance and the preservation of scientific value, and the Lunar Ledger now puts that into practice.
Open Lunar is delighted to announce a 2026-2027 project grant to Moon Monday, the world's only weekly blog and newsletter dedicated to covering lunar exploration developments from around the globe. Written by space journalist Jatan Mehta and published continuously since November 2020, Moon Monday tracks, analyses, and contextualises the programmes, missions, and themes shaping humanity's return to the Moon, and every edition remains free to read and free of advertising. This grant continues Open Lunar’s long-running support for the independent journalism that keeps the global record of lunar activity open, accurate, and available to everyone.
In case you missed it, earlier this summer, Open Lunar, JAOPS/Dymon, and COSPAR hosted a webinar highlighting a milestone event marking the release of the first mission dataset on the Lunar Ledger platform.
The webinar introduced the first lunar mission dataset, featuring data from the YAOKI rover mission flown aboard Intuitive Machines Mission 2. The session showcased early mission imagery and telemetry, explored lessons learned from the YAOKI mission, and discussed how accessible lunar datasets can support scientific research, technological development, and international collaboration. The conversation brought together mission operators, data scientists, and members of the scientific community to examine a central question: How can open data sharing enable the future of lunar exploration and science?
Tanja is Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University, President Emerita of the International Institute of Space Law, and a Vice President of the International Astronautical Federation. She co-authored 'Introduction to Space Law' and chairs the Board of Editors of Kluwer's journal Air and Space Law, and she co-founded the Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group and serves as an arbitrator for space-related disputes at the Permanent Court of Arbitration. With four decades of space law behind her, she has helped shape how the field thinks about governing activity beyond Earth.
Across her years on the board, that expertise has strengthened our work on cooperative and transparent lunar governance, and the judgment and care she brings have shaped both how we think and what we build. We are grateful for her service, and for the perspective she brings to this community.
Thank you, Tanja.
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