2022, Plenary, Statement, Agenda Item 15 Space Exploration and Innovation

Thank you, Honorable Chair.

The Open Lunar Foundation very much appreciates the opportunity to intervene on the critical topic of space exploration and innovation. In line with the vision of our organization, we would like to use this time to update this Honorable Committee on the latest lunar developments, or, as we like to say, “the state of the Moon”.

Over the coming decades the Moon is going to see a flurry of activity. Already this year there are 7 landers, 4 orbiters and 1 fly-by scheduled to launch to our natural satellite. Half of these activities are commercial, with governments participating as customers, and the other half are dedicated to scientific objectives. By current estimates, at the end of the present decade the Moon might have been visited by a total of 106 missions from 19 different countries featuring hundreds of international payloads. One after the other, all these missions will establish very important precedents like the first persistent infrastructure or the first commercial recovery of a space resource.