2025, Plenary, CRP, The Lunar Ledger: A Global Database of Lunar Objects and Activities
This paper is submitted by the Open Lunar Foundation, a U.S. 501c3 independent non-profit organisation and permanent observer to the Committee, committed to operating globally to support the enabling of a peaceful, cooperative, and sustainable lunar future through policy and infrastructure development.
As lunar activity accelerates—with over 100 missions projected by 2030, involving more than 20 space agencies and dozens of private entities—the need for effective global coordination, transparency, and operational safety becomes increasingly urgent. Potential conjunction events in lunar orbit are increasing with the influx of lunar missions. Data presented to the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee in June 2024 show that the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) triggered 41 “Red-Alarm” high-risk conjunction warnings between 19 February 2023 and 7 May 2024, prompting four avoidance manoeuvres that also involved NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2. Increased frequency filings from nation states and commercial entities highlight the risk of harmful interference without coordination: the International Telecommunication Union had received more than 50 lunar-spectrum filings from nine States by 12 January 2024, and 2024 was the first year in which commercial filings outnumbered governmental ones. These documented stresses—crowded orbits, narrowly averted collisions, and rapidly rising radio-frequency demand—demonstrate that a neutral, continuously updated clearing-house such as the Lunar Ledger is not optional; it is an immediate safety instrument for every present and future lunar actor.
Since 2022, Open Lunar has been researching and developing the Lunar Ledger, which aims to be a neutral, voluntary, and globally accessible platform for sharing information on lunar objects and activities. Designed to complement current and emerging Member State and UN initiatives for lunar information sharing, the Ledger provides a scalable, globally-facing, publicly accessible database that facilitates the sharing of technical information among state and non-state actors to enhance lunar coordination. It aims to improve transparency and reduce the risk of mission interference by documenting past, present, and future lunar activities. Built with operators and coordinators in mind, it enables rapid updates from mission actors to reflect the Moon’s evolving operational environment.
The Lunar Ledger supports voluntary data-sharing across completed, operational, and planned missions, and accepts submissions from governments, space agencies, commercial entities, academic institutions, and civil society. Its design and development are shaped by multi stakeholder input and focused on meeting the practical coordination needs of the expanding lunar community.
Since its inception, the Ledger has engaged over 150 stakeholders across six continents, including representatives from national governments, space agencies, commercial operators, and the scientific and academic sectors. Feedback from these engagements has directly informed the platform’s design, governance approach, and development roadmap. We very much welcome all opportunities to engage, gather perspectives, and collaborate.
The Lunar Ledger is not a substitute for formal legal frameworks and initiatives underway at COPUOS, but rather is a practical infrastructure prototype designed to support the Committee’s work and fill a gap for operational data that can be directly uploaded by commercial actors.
The Ledger is intended to complement and reinforce existing and emerging relevant state-level and UN-led databases, registries, and information-sharing mechanisms. It will solicit direct submissions from government, scientific, and commercial actors, focusing on information that helps operators coordinate and deconflict. It will also draw from and link to other state, UN, and non-state lunar information sharing efforts, promoting and amplifying their visibility.