Cooperative Landing Pads
[Sponsored] Join Open Lunar Foundation on September 12th at 9am PDT for a virtual event showcasing their latest fellowship research!
Celestial Citizen is thrilled to be supported in part this year by the Open Lunar Foundation, an organization working toward a peaceful, cooperative, lunar presence. Continue reading below for a short spotlight on some of the work that they do as well as information regarding their next fellowship showcase event.
Open Lunar's upcoming virtual event, set for September 12, 2024, marks the conclusion of their showcase series and will be featuring recently released research on Cooperative Landing Pads. This final installment follows their previous discussions on Lunar Power Standards and Community Review of Lunar Payloads. We encourage you to register for what promises to be an insightful and educational online gathering!
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You're Invited: Open Lunar Fellowship Research Showcase
On Thursday, September 12th, Open Lunar fellow Ashley Kosak will present her research on Cooperative Landing Pads Infrastructure through their fellowship research showcase. Ashley’s research has shown that there are likely to be a limited number of suitable landing sites, and in order to avoid competition among lunar actors a cooperative approach is needed. Not only will it alleviate competition, but it also has the potential to unlock new areas for cooperation whilst accelerating lunar exploration through the standardization of infrastructure.
Why attend:
Learn how lunar landing sites are selected.
Find out about current requirements for lunar landing pads and proposed construction methods.
Discover how a cooperative approach could assist lunar actors and alleviate competition for sites.
Explore Open Lunar’s proposed business model for cooperative pads.
Research Publication: Cooperative Landing Pads — Enabling the highway to space exploration
We are at a turning point in human history where the inhabitation of another planet is confidently on the horizon. The rapid innovation in launch vehicles and spacecraft technology has made it possible to envision a world where humans can land and live on the Moon and eventually Mars. A lunar landing pad is essential for future space exploration and sustainable operations on the Moon. It provides a stable, dust-free surface for spacecraft to land, reducing the risk of damage from lunar dust and debris that can be kicked up during landing and takeoff.
There are a number of factors in selecting a landing site, from terrain to the available resources. In addition, mission objectives may also determine which site is best suited for a landing. This likely means that there are a limited number of suitable landing sites on the Moon. As lunar activity increases, competition for suitable landing sites will also increase. The number of suitable landing sites could be further reduced by current activities damaging the integrity of sites due to the associated particle ejection that happens from landing and take-off.
Rather than seeing the number of suitable landing sites as a constraint for future missions, it presents a real opportunity for cooperation, whereby a collective approach could be taken to develop shared landing pads, reducing the burden on each actor to identify and secure their own site. A collective approach could help foster standardization for landing pads, which will be key going forward to unlocking further opportunities for collaboration.
Standardizing the infrastructure of a landing pad, allows companies to build to a similar engineering requirement with the assurance that the landing pad at the other end of this journey is prepared to accept their vehicle. This type of standardization is not uncommon, the ISS has standard docking ports which all vehicles must build in compliance with and test to similar standards in order to launch a space vehicle and dock. By doing so, it gives all the astronauts, engineers, and executives the assurance that this vital piece of the environment within space will be protected from the moment a mission lifts off. Building a standardized infrastructure and common qualification system means even internationally, we are all speaking the same language when it comes to a lunar landing pad.