The U.S. Outlines Scientific and Technological Vision for Cislunar Frontier

The U.S. S&T approach to Cislunar space

The decade ahead is critically important for exploration of Cislunar space, including the Lunar surface. The U.S. government, other countries, and private entities are all planning to send spacecraft into and through Cislunar space in the coming years. NASA estimates that over the next ten years human activity in Cislunar space will be equal to or exceed all that has occurred in this region since the Space Age began in 1957.

The growth of current and planned activities in Cislunar space is driven by decreasing launch costs, advanced and increasingly commodified space technologies, growing commercial interest in space activities, new missions by national space programs that are motivated by national and geopolitical ambitions, and the utility of Cislunar activities as a programmatic step toward some future missions into the solar system. These trends have opened Cislunar space as a new domain of diverse human activities, and spacefaring actors will begin to set important new precedents across the next decade.

Leadership by the United States and its international partners will support the responsible, peaceful, and sustainable exploration and use of Cislunar space, including the Moon. Fostering scientific discovery, economic development, and international cooperation are essential to sustaining this leadership. With this framework, the Cislunar S&T Strategy provides four objectives for the early years of Cislunar growth:

(1) Support research and development (R&D) to enable long-term growth in Cislunar space.

(2) Expand international S&T cooperation in Cislunar space.

(3) Extend U.S. space situational awareness capabilities into Cislunar space.

(4) Implement Cislunar communications and PNT capabilities with scalable and interoperable approaches.

All four S&T objectives support the U.S. vision of responsible, peaceful, and sustainable exploration and use of Cislunar space, including the Moon. Visionary R&D can foster world-leading scientific discovery; new approaches created in R&D enable responsible and sustainable space activities, enable economic development, and promote peaceful uses of space to the benefit of all. International S&T cooperation can foster peace, develop responsible practices, and create collaborations to enable enduring human presence in Cislunar space, including at the Moon. Extending space situational awareness (SSA) into Cislunar space creates a necessary foundation to promote and sustain responsible spaceflight practices, and enables transparency to promote peaceful and cooperative uses of Cislunar space. Finally, implementing needed Cislunar communications and PNT capabilities with scalable and interoperable approaches, analogous to development of early internet technologies, can foster commercial development necessary for sustainable activities, build early technology ecosystems based on cooperation around shared values, and advance responsible and safe spaceflight practices.

These objectives build on enduring strengths of the United States, including a global network of allies and international partners, the ability to draw the world’s best talent and recombine it with the benefits of diversity, world-leading universities and higher education, private sector innovation ecosystems built on competition and self-correction, the rule of law and open science, and a culture of new beginnings.