The Grey Side of the Moon: our Geneva tabletop write-up and November events

Hi Open Lunarians,

The turn of a new season is a good moment to take stock, and this one has carried us around the world. In recent weeks, our team has been in Bangkok and Brasília, and in mid-November our team heads to Shanghai and Beijing, talking with the agencies, companies, and researchers who will shape how humankind operates on the Moon. Being in those rooms is a reminder of why we do this work. The Moon is getting busier, and the rules and shared infrastructure for working there are still being written. We believe they should be written openly, with everyone who has a stake at the table, and that is exactly what we do at Open Lunar.

This month's newsletter is full of that effort. Samuel Jardine and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy have published their write-up of September's lunar security tabletop exercise, The Grey Side of the Moon, alongside Sam's own account of the Geneva Security Debate. A new edition of Lunar Takes explores who gets a voice in lunar governance. On the Lunar Ledger side, Nhat Nguyen spent late October in Bangkok moderating, presenting, and leading a table at APRSAF-32 and the Moon Village Association workshop. And on the blog, Rae Smith-Cohn revisits Open Lunar's founding principles in light of recent news.

Read on for the details, and if you are heading to any of the events coming up in November, let us know!

Thank you,

Samuel Jardine and Simon Cleobury (GCSP's Head, Arms Control and Disarmament) have published their read on September's tabletop exercise, which brought together nearly 30 participants, including ambassadors and diplomats from both Artemis Accords and International Lunar Research Station states, alongside UN officials and specialists in space, security, cyber policy and law, to explore lunar security and governance on the sidelines of the Outer Space Security Conference.

Our Senior Policy Lead, Samuel Jardine, shares his take on September's Geneva Security Debate, where panellists from the United States, Europe and China discussed how the Outer Space Treaty applies as strategic competition grows in cislunar space. It complements the Grey Side of the Moon write-up above, from the tabletop exercise we held the same afternoon.

Since 2020, 76 countries have signed the Artemis Accords and 13 have joined the International Lunar Research Station, yet only five have ever landed on the Moon. In Lunar Takes #2, Samuel Jardine asked international experts, including Hasan Abbas (UN ATLAC Co-Chair), Dr Christopher Newman (Northumbria University), Julia Selman Ayetey (African Association of Air & Space Law) and Dr Alessandra Marino (The Open University), how lunar governance can meaningfully include non-spacefaring and emerging spacefaring states, and what is at stake if it fails to do so.

Twelve people have walked on the Moon and none of them claimed it. The next arrivals are coming to stay, and whoever gets there first could set the rules for everyone else. Open Lunar's answer, from the Res Luna project to the Lunar Ledger, is to agree on the rules before the first perimeter is drawn. In this blog post, Chief Operating Officer Rae Smith-Cohn reflects on the question: if the Moon isn't owned by anyone, but at the same time it's for the benefit of all, how is that managed?

Our Project and Partnership Lead for the Lunar Ledger, Nhat Nguyen, spent the last week of October in Bangkok. APRSAF-32, the 10th Global Moon Village Workshop and Symposium, and Thailand Space Expo 2026 brought much of the region's space community together there.

On 27 October, Nhat moderated “Coordinating Lunar Surface Operations” at the Moon Village Association workshop. The panellists were Alejandro Sela (JAOPS), Antonio Stark (ispace), Jaeho Lee (Unmanned Exploration Laboratory) and Steve Campbell (Australian Space Agency). That put a mission operations provider, a lander company, a rover developer and a national space agency on one stage. They discussed what operators need to coordinate as landings cluster in the same regions. This includes questions on when operations planning should start, what operators can only learn from their neighbours, and who should hold shared information so operators from different programmes can rely on it.

The same day, Nhat presented “Coordination Before Congestion” to the 32nd Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF-32) Space Policy and Law Working Group. He shared findings from Open Lunar's consultation with more than 350 stakeholders on what lunar operators will and won't share, and what a workable information-sharing mechanism needs.

On 30 October, Nhat joined “The Shared Pole: Where Are We At? A Bangkok Lunar Governance Dialogue”, convened by the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) with the Lunar Policy Platform, the Moon Village Association, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and Open Lunar as partners. He spoke on the civil society panel on lunar governance and led a table in the interactive exercise. There, participants sorted lunar governance problems into coordination problems, cooperation problems and zero-sum disputes.

Our Senior Policy Lead, Samuel Jardine, was invited to participate in a UNIDIR side event, “Strengthening Coordination in Space Safety and Space Security Governance”, at the UN General Assembly held at the UN Headquarters in New York. The 26 October event looked at how multilateral discussions on outer space are split between space safety, addressed by the Fourth Committee and the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), and space security, addressed by the First Committee, the Conference on Disarmament and the Open-Ended Working Group on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS). The aim was to identify issues that fall between the two tracks ahead of the joint First and Fourth Committee session on outer space on 29 October.

Sam spoke to delegations on how the international community should coordinate on lunar activity across the safety and security tracks. The number of missions and actors at the Moon is growing, and ideas to restrict activity around the sites of lunar operations raise questions around safety, access, contested interpretations and ideas of governance, and strategic competition- especially for long-duration infrastructure and missions. If these elements are not addressed holistically across regional groups, lunar activities may risk exacerbating mistrust and becoming a source of tension between actors.

The panel was moderated by Sarah Erickson, Lead Researcher in UNIDIR's Space Security Programme. Sam's fellow panellists were Natália Archinard, Senior Advisor for Outer Space at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue; David Pusztai, Policy Officer at the European External Action Service; and Kazuto Suzuki, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo.

Rachel Williams, Executive Director of Open Lunar Foundation, is attending the 8th Summit for Space Sustainability in Brasília, Brazil, where she spoke on the panel “Full Moon, Full Participation” on 4 November. Co-hosted by the Secure World Foundation, the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), and the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation of the Federal District (SECTI-DF), the Summit is taking place on 4–5 November 2026, and is the first edition being held in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The panel examined how sustainable practices for lunar surface operations and traffic coordination can keep cislunar space open to actors beyond the established spacefaring countries, and what role emerging and new actors can play in shaping those practices. Rachel joined Dr Ulpia-Elena Botezatu (Romanian Space Agency and Co-Chair of the UN COPUOS Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation), Rodrigo Leonardi and Márcia Alvarenga (Brazilian Space Agency), Jane Davies (UK Space Agency), and Alejandro Román (Paraguay Space Agency and IAF ACCESS Committee), and drew on Open Lunar's work on cooperative, transparent lunar governance. We will cover the details and more in next month's newsletter.

Our Senior Policy Lead, Samuel Jardine, will be in Shanghai and then Beijing from 10 to 15 November. Sam will be attending the 24th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals (CIEP) and the Second Plenary Meeting of the Global University Alliance for Outer Space Policy and Law Education (GUAOSPLE). Sam will also speak at the International Space Law and Policy Symposium in Beijing, on its panel on Space Resources, Lunar and Deep Space Activities, moderated by Dr Ulpia-Elena Botezatu.

If you are attending these events, or happen to be in Shanghai or Beijing, drop us a line and let Sam know!