Introducing Nhat Nguyen, Open Lunar’s new Project and Partnership Lead, Lunar Ledger
Open Lunar Foundation is excited to welcome Nhat Nguyen to the core team. Read a welcome note from Nhat and learn more about his background and position.
“If heavy industry could one day move to the Moon’s far side, Earth would not have to keep producing at the cost of its own sustainability, and the materials could come back home. That is the kind of long-term future I would like to help build toward.”
I'm thrilled to join the Open Lunar Foundation as the Project and Partnerships Lead for the Lunar Ledger. In one of my first conversations with Rachel, our Executive Director, she asked what my vision for the Moon was. I told her about an idea I've held for a long time: if we can eventually move heavy industry off Earth, our own planet gets the breathing room it needs for real, long-term sustainability. What drew me to Open Lunar is the belief that this kind of future does not start with a treaty; it starts with early, voluntary behavior that becomes a norm, then a precedent, then policy, the same pattern that turned human migration from a rare exception into a widely recognized right. Much of my path here has been about convening people around a shared goal, whether that was coordinating global aerospace partners on a multi-country satellite mission, or founding the Vietnam Space Industry Group to bring competitive players together around shared initiatives. The Ledger is that same idea applied to lunar mission data.
Most recently, I was Mission Manager at Space Machines Company, where I directed a large portfolio of projects, including the flagship Australia-India Space MAITRI mission, coordinating partnerships across global aerospace leaders, startups, and academic institutions. Before moving into the space sector, I was CEO and co-founder of Otrafy, an AI-powered software platform, where I led global engineering teams and grew the company through early-stage funding rounds. That experience gave me a deep, practical grounding in product strategy, roadmap definition, and building technology at scale. I also founded the Vietnam Space Industry Group, organizing regional chapters of the NASA Space Apps Challenge and the ActInSpace hackathon series, and I hold a certificate in space systems engineering and space risk management from the MILO Mission Academy for Lunar Exploration, and served as a Foresight Institute Space Fellow.
In my first weeks at Open Lunar, I'm focused on learning the Lunar Ledger inside and out: understanding where the platform stands today, meeting the team and community behind it, and identifying where I can add the most value as we push toward the Ledger's next phase of growth and adoption.
I'm looking forward to working closely with this community (from commercial operators to policymakers) to help the Ledger become a trusted, widely adopted piece of lunar infrastructure. If you're working in this space and want to connect, I'd love to hear from you.