The European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) is releasing the results of a three-hour lunar tabletop exercise, “Surface Tensions”, co-organised with Open Lunar Foundation. The exercise offered a practical and engaging forum for some of the world’s leading space policy experts to grapple with the governance questions that will define the next era of lunar exploration.
The exercise split participants into four competing actors to test how they would behave after landing in the same patch of lunar south pole in the mid-2030s, simulating potential real-world situations as lunar exploration becomes more popular and accessible to new players.
The assigned teams consisted of two state programmes, a multinational science coalition and a venture-backed mining firm. Each of them was given a public mission alongside hidden objectives. They operated on a shared grid where they were faced with realistic lunar problems that carried real consequences, such as dust, interference and access to scarce, volatile-rich terrain. As the exercise progressed, landings and infrastructure spilled beyond each actor’s initial square, and what teams tolerated and how they responded shaped the exercise.
"The tabletop showed the importance of coordinating lunar exploration to ensure the safety of lunar missions, and highlighted the value of information-sharing for scientific, government exploration, and economically driven missions."
"As lunar activity grows, competition and cooperation will increasingly sit side by side. Tabletop exercises like this help us explore with those who'd be in the hot seat, in a low-risk, high-trust environment, how mistrust, strategic competition, and gaps in basic information-sharing and other challenges, can turn manageable coordination problems into political and physical crisis, while testing practical ways to mitigate this and make activity on the Moon safer, more predictable and more cooperative."
More than 20 delegates took part in the tabletop, from Luxembourg, Switzerland, South Korea, Poland, Chile, the Maldives, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
About Open Lunar Foundation
Open Lunar Foundation, established in 2018, is an independent, non-profit organisation working to support the peaceful, sustainable, and cooperative development of the Moon. It serves as a neutral platform for dialogue, research, and coordination across governments, industry, academia, and civil society. Open Lunar advances global awareness of strategic lunar issues and contributes analysis, tools, and practical frameworks to help decision-makers and mission operators steward the Moon as a shared domain for the benefit of all humanity.
