Surface Tensions: Findings from a Lunar Coordination Tabletop with ESPI
AUTHOR: SAMUEL JARDINE
ESPI has published a report on Surface Tensions, the tabletop we convened on the sidelines of the 2026 UNCOPUOS Plenary. During the session, declared operational areas shaped behaviour without formal recognition, and a habitat announced publicly but absent from any shared operational picture was damaged by a rival's landing.
In June, on the sidelines of the 2026 UNCOPUOS Plenary, we convened Surface Tensions with the European Space Policy Institute under its Vienna Space Diplomat Initiative. More than 20 delegates from Member States took on four asymmetric actors operating in the same area of the lunar south pole in the mid-2030s: a multinational science consortium, a commercial mining firm overseen by a light-touch responsible state, and two major state programmes.
No actor coordinated its initial deployment. Consultation began only once activities overlapped, or when one actor needed information or restraint from another. None of the declared operational areas was formally recognised, yet several shaped behaviour anyway, either because sustained presence made challenging them costly or because they sat in terrain others had little reason to enter. Information was traded as leverage, and bilateral arrangements favoured the commercial operator, which consequently had little incentive to support a multilateral framework.
The most consequential moment came from a gap in shared information. A crewed habitat had been announced publicly but never entered into a common, verified operational understanding, and a rival programme's reactor landing damaged it. The forum convened afterwards agreed on principles, but left liability and the designation of future areas unresolved.
Samuel Jardine and Therese Jones set out the full account, team by team, in the report published by ESPI.
