Education and Outreach
Project ContributorS: Jatan Mehta (jatan.space, Moon Monday); Moon Dialogs conveners — Arizona State University: Interplanetary Initiative, Open Lunar, Secure World Foundation, MIT Media Lab: Space Exploration Initiative, For All Moonkind, and Space Generation Advisory CouncilWorking to build shared lunar literacy by funding independent writing and convening open dialogue on how humanity returns to the Moon.
Open Lunar Impact
Good governance depends on a well-informed public. Before a norm can be agreed, a decision scrutinised, or a precedent set wisely, the people involved need a shared, accurate picture of what is actually happening on and around the Moon—and a place to reason about it together. Open Lunar invests in both halves of that equation. Through our long-running sponsorship of Moon Monday, we support the independent journalism that keeps the global record of lunar activity open, accurate, and free to read. Through Moon Dialogs, we helped convene the forum, and produce the reference material, that turned that record into practical policy literacy. Neither project sells access. Both exist so that anyone—an agency official, a founder, a graduate student, or a curious reader—can arrive at the conversation prepared.
Moon Monday
Independent, ad-free journalism tracking global lunar exploration, sponsored by Open Lunar since its first edition.
About the Project
Moon Monday is a weekly blog and newsletter written by space writer Jatan Mehta, covering, analysing, and contextualising crewed and robotic lunar exploration developments by countries worldwide. It has published continuously since November 2020, tracking the major programmes, missions, and themes shaping humanity's return to the Moon. Every edition is free to read, ad-free, and supported entirely by organisations and individuals who value the work.
About the Need
When Moon Monday began, there was almost no consistent, independent public writing on lunar affairs. Agency announcements, company press releases, and scattered trade coverage each told a fragment of the story, and no single accessible source assembled the whole global picture. That gap mattered: without a common record, policy conversations start from unevenly distributed information, and the actors with the largest communications budgets shape the narrative by default.
About the Solution
Open Lunar has sponsored Moon Monday since day one via a project grant — funding for work that needs to exist in the world, independent of whether our name appears beside it. Sponsorship carries no editorial influence; Jatan retains full control of coverage and wording under his published Editorial Independence Policy, and we would not want it otherwise. The value to us lies in the existence and integrity of the record, not in placement within it.
In practice, Moon Monday has become part of how Open Lunar does its research. It is the fastest route to a global view of lunar activity, and it is often where governance questions surface before they reach formal fora.
Reach and Readership
As of July 2026, Moon Monday and its sister publication Indian Space Progress reach a combined audience of more than 12,600 active subscribers and readers across over 100 countries, with year-on-year growth of 27 per cent and an average open rate of 47 per cent. Around seven in ten readers return edition to edition.
Read More
Moon Monday, edition #255 — a representative survey of the coverage
Moon Dialogs
A multi-institution forum that turned open discussion of lunar governance into practical, usable policy guidance.
About the Project
Moon Dialogs was a partnership founded in 2019 to explore governance and coordination mechanisms for the lunar surface. Convened by Open Lunar alongside Arizona State University's Interplanetary Initiative, the Secure World Foundation, and the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative, with For All Moonkind and the Space Generation Advisory Council as contributing partners, it brought industry, government, and academia together on equal footing.
Its purpose was deliberately practical: to produce credible, actionable mechanisms facilitating lunar coordination, policies, norms, and laws, working through voluntary frameworks and cross-sector international support. Moon Dialogs was never a consensus body. It was a place to put forward ideas—tools, operating models, and rights frameworks aimed at the coming decade rather than the distant future.
About the Need
As lunar activity accelerated, the societal, environmental, and governance implications outpaced the venues available to discuss them. Formal multilateral processes move slowly and admit a narrow set of participants. Commercial and national programmes were making consequential design decisions in the meantime. What was missing was a forum where researchers, operators, and officials could reason together, in the open, early enough to matter.
About the Solution
Moon Dialogs built that space through several complementary strands of work:
Research Salons (2019–2022) — interdisciplinary sessions to develop, review, and share scholarship on lunar issues, sustaining an ongoing community of practice across organisations, nations, and disciplines.
Action Teams (2021) — working groups organised around three themes: Accessible Moon, Sustainable Moon, and Peaceful Moon, each producing actionable mechanisms under its own coordinators and rhythm.
The Transmission (2021) — a limited-edition newsletter bringing lunar matters down to Earth through commentary from leading voices in lunar policy and technology.
The Lunar Policy Handbook (2023) — the initiative's flagship output.
Released on 27 March 2023, the Lunar Policy Handbook is a reference guidebook for government personnel and private actors across the space industry. Part I sets out current policy issues including registration, liability, and transparency. Part II works through operational considerations, examining the policy implications of specific activity types—orbital, landed, and infrastructure. By offering a reliable, consistent reference point, the handbook builds lunar policy capacity across the international community, and remains freely available online as well as in print.