Join Our Conversation
Introducing Our Affiliate Program: How We’re Connecting Disciplines to Inform our Work and How You Can Get Involved.
In this blog, you’ll learn how we are bringing together diverse minds to foster and nurture innovative research and projects that promote lunar stewardship through this affiliate program. Affiliates are a select group of people, one subset of many parts of our community, and we look forward to growing this trusted group over time.
Rachel Williams, Chelsea Robinson
Announcing Open Lunar Fund-a-Fellow 2024 Campaign
The Fund a Fellow campaign is back. This fall we will be highlighting our fellowship program through an exciting campaign #fundafellow. Read the blog for more details and visit the [Fund a Fellow website](https://www.openlunar.org/fellow).
Jacob Malthouse
Our New Independent Project Evaluation Process Explained
Twice a year, we take a pause on coaching to evaluate the current direction, level of support, and future outlook of our projects. This piece will explain how we conduct this process and the important role of outside evaluators.
Chelsea Robinson, Rachel Williams
How our Network Turned 33 Novel Lunar Ideas into 7 Hunch Fellowships: The 2023 Ideas to Hunches Process Explained.
Collaboratively developing ideas into hunches was a major milestone in Open Lunar’s development. Previously, our process for developing ideas around our fellowships was run by a small group of highly engaged experts. This worked well, but we wanted to see what would happen if we really opened up our approach to collecting ideas and collaborating on their evaluation. We are called “Open” Lunar, after all! In this piece we want to share two things: 1. Explain the final step in our hunch selection. 2. Share the complete list of ideas which were evaluated by our community in 2023.
Rachel Williams, Jacob Malthouse, Chelsea Robinson
Innovation Process Launch- Event Recording
Introducing Open Lunar's innovative approach to Lunar Stewardship! We are thrilled to announce Open Lunar's innovation process, aimed at creating sustainable support systems for lunar projects that enhance cooperation and good governance. Watch the video of the event that launched this process.
Jacob Malthouse, Rachel Williams, Chris Hadfield
Our Upcoming Areas of Research
We are excited to unveil the areas we're concentrating on for our forthcoming fellowship cohort, launching in January 2024.
Deciding Where We Invest
Open Lunar's focus is creating impact toward a future on the Moon that we are all proud of, not just adding more to the lunar ecosystem for the sake of its growth. This post expands on the beginning of our innovation process: Downselecting from a backlog of Ideas to Hunches worth dedicating research fellowships to.
How the Astra Carta can Transform Space Governance
The Astra Carta, a joint statement of intent towards space sustainability, was launched on 28 June by King Charles. The Open Lunar Team and Directors played a central role in the development of the Zero Draft, drawing on the deep expertise that we have in space, technology, sustainable development and global policy.
What we do on the Moon can transform how we live on Earth. It starts with community.
As one of the founders of the ESG movement, I have witnessed the transformational power of small teams in the right place at the right time. I believe that the Open Lunar Foundation is one of those teams. Open Lunar has the potential to drive the creation of an approach to Lunar settlement that puts stewardship first.
Possibilities for a Local Lunar Time Standard
The event celebrated the launch of the Timekeeping White Paper which discusses the potential benefits and challenges of establishing a local lunar time standard and its implications for lunar missions, including its compatibility with existing lunar initiatives.
Creating Lunar Stewardship - Behind the Scenes of our Innovation Process
This year, Open Lunar has worked to codify and clarify our process to multiply our impact, enhance our focus, engage more people, and provide more certainty, so our engine of innovation can thrive. This post will outline both this new approach and how we arrived at it.
Open Lunar’s Board is Growing! Help us Fill Two New Board Positions.
We’re excited to share that Open Lunar is now recruiting for two Board positions! In March, the current Board of Directors conducted a thorough review of Open Lunar’s governance. As part of that process, the Board agreed to add two new directors. This will take our Board from five to seven members.
Launch Event Video: Bright Moon - Creating a Global Registry of Lunar Activities
This event marked the launch of the Registry Project White Paper which provides an insightful exploration of the creation of an open, transparent, and dedicated lunar registry that will catalogue crucial mission details such as launch state, operating actor, location, time, and more.
Launching the Lunar Policy Handbook: Guiding Responsible and Sustainable Development of the Moon
The Lunar Policy Handbook is a reference guidebook for government personnel and private actors in the space industry. It is designed to be a high-level guide that is useful for a broad audience of space actors, outlining policy issues and operational considerations related to lunar activities.
How a Lunar Registry Can Increase Mission Success
A voluntary Lunar Registry would not replace or render governmental or intergovernmental registries obsolete. Rather, it would complement them by providing a simple, flexible and neutral opportunity for missions to share and coordinate information.
Open Lunar Timekeeping Project Blog Post Series: Blog 2
A cooperative, decentralized network of timekeeping devices could offer an agile, affordable approach to supporting an ecosystem of actors in cislunar space.
Building Lunar Security and Cooperation Through an Astropolitcal Lens- how to construct normative behaviours on the moon- enter the registry
Norms, particularly transparency, are needed to stabilise competition and promote cooperation on the Moon. However, these are not created in a vacuum but require their own tools and frameworks to develop, champion, and facilitate the adoption of the norm among the intended community of actors.
Building Lunar Security and Cooperation Through an Astropolitical Lens- Why Normative Behaviours are Needed for Lunar Activity
Normative behaviours are integral to fostering a coherent community of actors and promoting peace and stability for existing treaties and aspirational goals. The author explains why normative behaviours are needed for Lunar activity.
Open Lunar Timekeeping Project Blog Post Series: Blog 1
The author's research is focused on considering possible architectures for an open and independent time standard for cislunar space. First in a series.
Building Lunar Security and Cooperation Through an Astropolitical Lens- Why Normative Behaviours are Needed for Lunar Activity
Normative behaviours are integral to fostering a coherent community of actors and promoting peace and stability for existing treaties and aspirational goals. The author aims to explain why normative behaviours are needed for Lunar activity.
Building Lunar Security and Cooperation Through an Astropolitical Lens- the role of normative behaviours in creating stability.
This blog posts series will analyse the political backdrop for an independent multi-stakeholder Lunar activity registry, highlighting why it’s needed and how it might help. These are the precursors to a more comprehensive White Paper which we’ll be working on over the coming months.
Incentives and Barriers to Corporate Engagement with the Lunar Registry
The author exploers the incentive structures that would enable commercial participation in a Lunar Registry through a series of related posts.
Last-mile Analogies for a Lunar Communications Network
There is an opportunity for actors interested in entering the lunar communications space to learn from the best practices of network infrastructure providers (ISPs/IXPs), as well as the open source community.
Research Showcase Event Video July 2021
Every few months, we work to collate all our recent insights and share it publicly in a rare and powerful summary of the work that we do. In this event you'll hear from five researchers, four of which are part of our esteemed Fellowship program, as well as Dr Woods, Senior Researcher and lunar engineer.
Open Lunar Statement to the UN COPUOS Legal Subcommitee
When Open Lunar began, policy and governance for lunar activities was considered obscure. Just a few short years ago, the idea of discussing space resources at COPUOS was almost unthinkable. Since then, it has become clear that there are numerous legal and policy questions and the Moon is likely to be our first test.
Identifying Governance Challenges for Nuclear Energy on the Moon
As countries and companies look to expand economic and scientific activities to the Moon and beyond, the performance advantages of nuclear energy underlie renewed interest in the technology, and iterative development of national and international law is needed to establish sustainable governance.
“Breaking Ground” - A Lunar Resources Trust
Today we announce Breaking Ground, a lunar resources trust which will exist to steward and demonstrate formal and effective institutional management of lunar resources between different stakeholders.
Open Lunar Fellowship Showcase: Event Video
Open Lunar Foundation leads a Fellowship program inviting experts across multiple sectors to contributor their talents towards the mission of a peaceful cooperative long term future on the Moon which benefits all life.
Research Showcase
Get inspired by our latest research on lunar governance, security and resource management.
Introduction to Polycentricity
Polycentricity is not a new concept, however it is also not yet mainstream. We believe this concept is central to designing the future of institutions, public goods, utilities management and more within the lunar economy.
Blog: Norms and Public Choice Theory on the Moon, a summary of concepts.
A series of frameworks and conceptual tools for analysing norms on the Moon.