 I'm the Space Law Advisor at the Secure World Foundation. I also teach International Space Law at Georgetown. At Secure World, what we have traditionally done as an NGO is focused on peaceful, sustainable uses of space closer to Earth, lower-thorbit behavior activities at lower-thorbit into geosynchronous orbit. It is only in the past few years that our attention and concern has expanded higher and broader, and that is driven by the things that we see happening and the ambitions and the plans that we see happening at the Moon. Whether it is scientific activities and ambitions, whether it is national space agencies, exploration plans or scientific plans, whether it is even not just civil but military interests and concerns on the Moon, in addition to private sector activities and ambitions on the Moon. And in fact, when you put all of those things together, when you start to think about what people want to do on the Moon, all those concerns that we had for elsewhere in space now, that they are now also concerning us when we look at lunar activities and lunar plans and what people want to do on the Moon, nation states, et cetera. In fact, the window for normative rulemaking and discussions has now really opened in a serious fashion for lunar activities in a way that maybe 10 or 15 years ago was still beyond the horizon. So I think the time now is actually when we need to be having these serious pragmatic discussions on setting rules for behavior on the Moon in a way that doesn't create tension or is escalatory or is rivalrous. It's very difficult to have those discussions. And in fact, the rules and norms that we set for the Moon will carry on elsewhere to other celestial bodies and elsewhere in the Solar System. Space law traditionally has concerned low Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit. This is where we see the bulk of activity. Now, finally, we're talking about rules on a celestial body. That's the interesting thing. And the rules that we set, especially now and in the future, will lead us elsewhere in the Solar System dealing with asteroids, dealing with how we behave on Mars. So it's difficult stuff. Thankfully, we have an excellent panel of real experts and practitioners and stakeholders to start these discussions and show what the stakes are. So on my immediate right is Dr. Phil Metzger. Dr. Metzger is a planetary scientist with the Florida State Institute at the University of Central Florida performing research and technology development related to asteroid, lunar, and Martian regolith, including soil mechanics, space weathering, mining, beneficiation, benefaction. What is that? Beneficiation? Either. Construction and rocket exhaust interactions with relith. In 2021, congratulations, the International Astronomical Union, named asteroid 36329 after you. Very cool. Thank you so much for coming, Phil. To Phil's right, well, from my perspective. On the other side of me is Laura Delgado Lopez. She is the Senior Policy Analyst at the NASA Office of Technology Policy and Strategy, OTPS at NASA headquarters. She is quote unquote on detail from the Policy Branch of the NASA Science Mission Director at the SMD. Laura is also the former Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Space Policy Journal, which by the way, is the premier peer review publication for the interdisciplinary study of space policy. Laura, good to see you. Oh, we moved you. I introduced you first. Just to keep you on your toes. Let's take a step back. Between Laura and the college, Angel. Angeliki is from the Strategy and Innovation Office with the Director of Human and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency. She is part of ESA's Moon Strategy and the Leo Strategy teams, the Space Resource Steering Team and the Moonlight Commercialization Team. She's also part of ESA's newly established Solaris team for assessing the business case for space solar power, contributing to European net zero and energy security goals. Angeliki, good to see you and thank you for joining us today. On the other side of Laura is Nellie down there. She is the Business Line Manager at Surrey Space Technology Limited, SSTL, where her main focus has been on the realization of SSTL's ambitions in lunar commercialization and navigation services. She's now developing SSTL Lunar, a brand of SSTL dedicated to the provision of lunar support services, looking at offering commercial lunar data, relay service provision with the Lunar Pathfinder. Nellie, thank you so much for joining us today. And finally, at the end, you have Lansman, who worked in the Israeli space industry as a Systems and Operations Engineer and was the Deputy Mission Director of the Bear Sheet Lunar Landry, the only privately funded spacecraft to reach the lunar surface. He's also founder and CEO of Moonscape. Moonscape's goal is to provide remote sensing services from low earth orbit. So we have the scientific academic community beyond that. We have space agencies to talk about their lunar ambitions and plans. And finally, the other very important stakeholder is the private industry. I'll first start with Dr. Metzger, and I wanna ask if you can give our audience kind of a survey of lunar ambitions, lunar goals, some of the scientific lunar ambitions and goals, but also some of the other activities that we'd like to do on the moment, including private activities. Sure, so first of all, thank you for having me here. Yeah, I totally agree with you that now is the time we need to start working on policy because there's so much that is going to start happening on the moon over the next decade, two decades. First of all, scientifically, there's this idea that we've been to the moon, why do we need to go back? Well, when we went to the moon last time, we learned enough to create a lot of really important questions. So now we need to go back to answer those questions. We have some beginnings of a theory on how the moon formed. We think a planet that we call Thea impacted the earth and formed a toroid of super hot geomaterial, which eventually coalesced into the moon, but the physics of that process haven't been worked out. By doing field geology on the surface, getting samples with the remnants magnetism, we can learn about the core processes in the moon and help to constrain those models. So that's our history. The moon is really crucial for the environment of the earth and there's a lot of thinking that advanced life depends on the moon to stabilize our axial tilt, for example. And it's a unique moon. I mean, our moon is compared to other planets in the solar system, we have a huge moon. Yeah, it's basically a double planet system. And I mean, we call it a planet. It's one of the terrestrial planets. And for the size of the moon, compared to the size of the primary, it's unique from everything we've seen. But so understanding the moon is part about understanding our own history, how we're able to live here. But more than that, the moon contains a record of the solar systems history. Here on the earth, the atmosphere and the water weathers the data and ruins the old data and the plate tectonics recycle the surface materials. But the moon has retained a history over its entire lifespan in the soil. And so if we can put field geologists on the surface of the moon to study the geochemistry, to study the chemistry of the ice and the poles of the moon, to study the impact layering history, to unravel it. For one thing, we might be able to figure out what happened 3.2 billion years ago when we think the solar system was disrupted, which sent lots of comments crashing into the earth, which brought the water and the carbon that formed us. And so by studying the moon, we can help to answer the question like how prevalent is life in the cosmos and are we alone? So some of the biggest questions are gonna be answered when we get back to the moon. But to do that science, to make it affordable, we need exploration systems. We need to learn to work with the resources of the moon. We need to develop those technologies, to mature them in the environment while they're operating. And I think we need boots on the ground to make that fast and effective. And then those same technologies that use the resources create business opportunities. And I think there is, right now, a business case for mining the water on the moon to create rocket fuel. I've been working on those technologies. A lot of my colleagues are working on them. And we've all been doing economic studies and the business case closes. So I think it may take a few years to mature the technologies, but according to the best economic models, water launched off the moon can out-compete water launched off the earth all the way down to low earth orbit within a few years, within maybe 10 years. And that's gonna revolutionize the economics of space transportation and doing everything in space. Excellent. Folks with like law policy backgrounds hopefully are already thinking of like the implications of what you've said. Like the scientific ambitions and interesting opportunities, but we're already starting to see some of the governance challenges. I now wanna go to Issa. I wanna talk to Angeliki. Angeliki, if you can kind of give us an overview of European plans and ambitions on the moon. Of course. First of all, thank you, Grace, Secure World Foundation and the UK Space Agency for hosting this amazing conference and important conversation today. At Issa is a very dynamic and interesting period for human exploration, human and robotic exploration. First of all, I want to say that Europe is already part of NASA's Artemis plans by contributing the service module to the Orion, but also providing exploring and habitation modules and enhanced communications for the gateway. However, still our exploration program is, let's say, one of the smallest and optional programs we have at Issa. Like there's a lot of emphasis for Earth observation and science missions, but we are lucky because we have a very bold and new Issa director who is trying to raise the European ambition for an investment also for human and robotic exploration. So, now we are in this process of defining a new exploration program and we have the Issa ministerial council that's coming up in November. We call it the DERA NOVA program which is gonna have these three destinations lower for the moon, Mars, and we are the major element, let's say we try to propose there is a European large logistics lander, so we have autonomous capabilities to access the lunar surface. This could provide up to 1.5 tons of science and technologies to the lunar surface, but we are also starting to study other potential elements that we could contribute to Artemis surface operations from habitation modules to an ISRU pilot plan. ISRU? Yes, we have a space resources strategy, also the European Space Resources Innovation Center in collaboration with Luxeburg. We have a different emphasis more on oxygen extraction than ice water, than NASA is focusing more. And we also study a new constellation for lunar combs and navigation. We are exploring potentially power surface station on the moon, also power beaming and space solar power for lunar surface operations. And finally we have like a constantly open call for commercial partnerships. We have the lunar pathfinder that they will also speak about. And yeah, it's a very dynamic period and we need to see at the ministerial what important decisions we'll be taking because it can impact what Europe is gonna be doing on the moon and beyond up to 2004 days. So we hope that the member states will also follow the DJ's ambition. Okay, and hold on, it's scientific investigations and exploration of moon, but there's also like a commercialization and development, industrial development component. Yes, we have an ESA lunar science strategy. We have the space resources strategy which is a separate document. And then we have a commercialization department that has a constantly open call for commercial partnership. So various startups can come to us and ask for support to mature their business model and find flight opportunities or other resources they might need. And so ESA does want to use resources on the moon. Yes, we have a space resources strategy that has been endorsed by ESA Council. And as I said before, we have an annual space resources where we co-organize with the Luxembourg Space Agency. We are a partner at the European Space Resources Center that is based in Luxembourg where we are actually now starting about creating a ground, let's say a ground model for ISRU extraction, we do like a ground modeling industry. And yeah. Okay. Now let's talk about what NASA's plans and ambitions are. So Laura, as far as you- Sure, thank you, Chris. And thank you, Sikir Walden, the UK Space Agency for the invitation. And Yoliki mentioned Artemis. And actually, that's a great segue to Phil's comments because Artemis is really the focal point of a whole diverse set of activities that will achieve something historic, which is landing the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. And that will, everything we learn in that process in the series of increasingly complex missions that will get us there, we will use to propel the next giant leap, which is humans on Mars. And so this is a vision of really kind of, like I said, increasingly complex towards sustainable exploration. Artemis I will involve on crewed test of the space launch system rocket, as well as the Orion capsule. We're hoping to do that late August or early September. Date will be confirmed soon. And then after that, we will have a crewed orbital mission around the moon to return humans to the lunar orbit for the first time since 1972. And then eventually we'll have those boots on the lunar surface in 2025. And so there's a lot of activities, as you know, trying to get us there and make that successful. But if you're antsy for other developments on some of the robotic activities that we've been alluding to are also happening very soon this year, we're gonna have the first two deliveries under our commercial lunar payload services, which is a really interesting program. It's a competitively selected and it involves leveraging this growing commercial market of US companies that are able to deliver payloads to the moon. And that includes NASA payloads to do research, test some technologies, but also from other customers, other space agencies, private sector. In fact, the lunar pathfinder that we've been talking about is going to be delivered through a Clips provider, which is pretty exciting. Viper is another one. We just talked about volatiles and water ice, so Viper is gonna be a rover that's gonna help characterize some of those volatiles in the lunar surface and help us get us on that path for in situ research utilization that we've been talking about. So when you think about NASA's lunar exploration plans, it's really trying to take advantage of all this diverse, very complex kind of picture of activities to use that all and leverage all of that so that we do get to that goal of sustainable exploration. It's no longer about getting there first and leaving. It's about really building for commercial success and for the success of our partners. That's why we're not going alone, right? ESA, the UK, and other countries are really critical partners in that. And it's not just, again, not just exploration, but it is like fostering economic industrial development. Yes, I think, and actually NASA just issued a report about a week ago on the commercial competitiveness and some of the opportunities we see in that space with Artemis. I think the vision is for us to be sustainable, it has to enable the success of the private sector, right? And so that's where the governance questions come in, of course, but that's why we're trying to be really intentional and taking more risks in how we work with the private sector, not just the traditional contracts, but also things like CLIPS. Because it is gonna have us be, I think, more creative in our relationship with the private sector so that they can take risks and we can sort of figure it out together. Great. Now, before I go to the private sector, I wanna hear again from the government agencies, what governance gaps do you see in developing, all these visions and goals that you have, what governance gaps and how do you think NASA and ESA are working to solve them? I'll say. In terms of moonlight, I believe we have quite clear guidance. And for example, there's frequency coordination, like the problem we mainly have is what kind of standards, there are various different types of standards that commercial unicorns and navigations could be using. Obviously, in terms of space resources, now we have at the UN level a new international working group that for the next five years is gonna be debating the various legal aspects and governance issues around space resources, which I believe gonna be like a very long and complicated debate. And then, yeah, obviously with the human missions, it's gonna be a totally new territory. So I believe with every mission, we might be discovering new issues we need to consider. And to build on that, I think for us, one of the things we're starting to think about is with all of these actors, again, the vision is commercial, international, NASA and other space agencies. There's only so much room on the moon, right? And if we're all, for example, trying to get to the lunar South Pole, there's actual physical and technical constraints to where we can land and operate, for example, to do some of the research that a lot of us in the room are interested in. And so when you think about that, then when you make decisions about where you go and how you go, then there is a need to coordinate share information and perhaps have a consideration of these other principles like transparency and trying not to interfere with each other so that we don't inadvertently cut off opportunities for other actors that may come after us, right? And so there's actually one of the studies my office, the Office of Technology Policy and Strategy at NASA newly established last November. We have a study going on, looking at particularly that question of the lunar landing sites because trying to balance the technical, the policy considerations and trying to go through that exercise of, okay, how will we go about that? What are the constraints? And then I think the ambition is being transparent about those choices and those constraints will help set some of those precedents that I think will be necessary for other other locations in the solar system as well. You mean like internationally transparent? Like you would let the copos and elsewhere know where you want to go in the moment? I think so, yes. I don't have the specific answer of where we would go that, but that's definitely part of the vision. How would we share that information and it would timeline as well so that other actors were planning to go to the same location? How do we then coordinate? So we're starting to think about those questions because again, I think everyone in the room is in agreement. We want to be not getting each other's way, but so we got to think about what does that mean when we're actually trying to occupy the same lunar space. And not just with your industrial partners but with other nations that you're not part of. Exactly. Exactly. And to build upon that, of course, there are locations on the moon that are more scarce or more geopolitical or scientific interest like the South Pole or like the peaks of eternal life. And also apart from these locations that are specific and few, the corridors and the pathways you might need to take with that over to get there, it might be very specific. So it's also... We may need a stoplight, you know? My personal opinion is you mentioned the peaks of eternal light. Those are the hilltops near the poles of the moon which have nearly perpetual sunlight during the month. Those are areas of high energy. They're right close to the ice which is a super valuable resource. It's almost completely out of earth's gravity well so that the resources are available to do anything as base. So in my opinion, those peaks of eternal light are the most valuable real estate in the whole solar system and they're limited. So there's a policy issue. Noted. So before we get to that and talking about that, I now want to turn to commercial sector. Nellie, I want to speak with you. I want to hear a little bit about the moonlight program and whether there's sufficient clarity or guidance in the regulation for it. But first, please tell us about it. Sure. Thank you very much for having me on this panel and thank you to Issa and Nassar for introducing Lunar Pathfinder. Job done, perfect. I can go. It's a very exciting time for the commercial sector that is envisaging, developing the lunar activity and especially for SSTL which is developing and is still lunar activity that we have been targeting and working with UKSA, working with Issa and then working with Nassar now for a number of years. So our goal is to provide an infrastructure that's going to provide communication and navigation services as a local infrastructure around the moon. So we're talking about one satellite for Lunar Pathfinder but then we're involved in the Issa Moonlight Programme which is a constellation of satellite around the moon to provide communication and navigation services to lunar missions. So we are pioneering here an aspect of the lunar economy and very excitingly an aspect of the space for space because we're not talking about rendering a service for an asset, one element that is on space for us but a service that's in space for space and that's a very exciting aspect to look at. So I mentioned in the Pathfinder it's a single data relay satellite that's going to be launched through the Nassar Clips Programme and it will be followed by the Issa Moonlight constellation which we are working with Issa on the phase AB1 right now and then we'll see Angeliki is right, the ministerial will be a very significant outcome for how this Moonlight Programme is going to progress so we are all very, very interested in the outcome. On your question on the regulation I think, yes it does permit. So if I start with Lunar Pathfinder it's fairly simple, what we need to do is transmit and emit onto the Earth's link between the Earth and the data relay satellite and then the Moonlink between the data relay satellite and the lunar mission. That is a question of spectrum and frequency. So there is a lot of work that is being done on the private sector but also with Issa and Nassar to make sure that we are filing it properly but I think that we know pretty much how to do it and how to get the right regulation. Now there was a question of fostering and protecting the activities and I think that's much less clear because for us we're developing a support service, its services in support of lunar exploration so it means that the missions that we are supporting have to be themselves, sustainable, reliable and they need to come back. There is no point in investing a large amount of money in developing a sustainable infrastructure around the Moon if the first commerce to the Moon are going to be discouraged because they can't do anything with their research or because it's too complicated or because there is no regulation at all and they don't know how to develop their business case. In addition, we have business cases that we need to present to investors so we need to have a certain level of certainty. So perhaps is the answer to foster and protect. Okay, excellent. You have same questions to you, please tell us. So can you repeat the question please? So what are your company's plans for what you want to do on the Moon and is there sufficient regulation to give you clarity and protection against other actors? Well, what Moonscape is about is remote sensing mostly observation for the lunar surface which in contrary to regular observation missions for the Moon so far which were for purposes of science and exploration. This is for mostly for the benefit of the other lunar missions because there's going to be so many of those and they need some support. In my previous mission, the Bershet mission, I already saw that we don't have a clear information about what we're going to land on. The average resolution of images from the Moon is about 10 meters per pixel, right? And in very few sites we have better than that but we can do much better because 10 meters per pixel is not practical for the use of lenders, of landing companies because most of the lenders are much smaller than this pixel. So you actually don't know what you're going to land on top of and even though everyone is developing smart algorithms of hazard detection and avoidance, think about how you teach those algorithms, how you test them, you can't actually because you don't have the proper data about what's down there. And I think that it's something that we can provide spatial resolution of 10 to 20 centimeters per pixel which will be revolutionary for that cause. But also it can be used for other things like situation awareness, monitoring, prospecting if it's a hypospectral payloads and also to tackle all kinds of legal issues, legal disputes maybe that will happen for sure if you take into account the density of the missions on the surface of the moon, we mentioned that before. There's going to be a concentration of a lot of missions in the same places because these are the places we are interested in. But also if you imagine a scenario of a starship that lands somewhere on the moon with the capacity that they claim it's 100 metric tons. So even if it's just half of that, it's a lot of missions. So imagine they deploy the missions around the rocket and then what? Those missions are not going anywhere. I mean, several of them can be rovers but we know how slow rovers are. Most of the missions are going to stay in place with a very close proximity of sometimes a few meters from each other. So are we ready for that? Do we understand what it means in most space operations so far when we operate satellites? We mostly don't care what others are doing. Here we care because it will affect us and we will affect them. If we pick up the best spot of solar panels and we deploy them and everything is beautiful and then our neighbor begin to build some construction that casts shadow over our solar arrays. Is it, can we sue them? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer but it's something that might happen or even the fact that you don't know who your neighbors are. It can be a different country, maybe a rival country, maybe it's your commercial competitor. It can be also some entrepreneur that want to test their new space moon bike to drive around and spread a lot of regolith around. Who knows, it's possible. I'm not inventing that, it was on some journal. So this will happen and this means that we will need a way like an external eye to overlook what's going on, to monitor our very expensive assets there. And on Earth we have other alternatives, we can even send people to look what's going on on the moon, we don't have that privilege. So it's a different kind of space operations that need to start realizing that this is what's going on. So you ask about the regulations and... Yeah, I want to ask, I want to dwell on governmental oversight, authorization, supervision. We know the obligations in Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty states are internationally responsible, but they have that duty of authorization and continuing supervision to ensure continuing compliance with the treaties. For those folks who aren't aware of V.O.F. and his history, he has a very unique, possibly historical element when we talk about oversight of lunar activities. This is being broadcast and recorded, but V.O.F., I do want you to maybe explain a little bit about the situation, which is historical for you, in terms of a government knowing beforehand what was going to the moon. So you mean the tardigrades on here? Tell me in your own words, V.O.F., in your own words. Yeah, funny story. No, it wasn't that funny at the time. Well, my previous mission was with Space IELTS with a parachute mission. We sent the lantern to the moon. It was three years ago. And we got to the moon, not exactly as we planned, we crashed, but what we got there. And I think about two months after the crash, one of our suppliers who supplied the payload of several disk-like objects with a laser encryption of a lot of information like the entire Wikipedia and a lot of art and literature and stuff like that. He admitted on Twitter of all places that with the disks were a very tiny piece, a capsule that contained biological sample of DNA of some people. And I don't want to think what it means. And tardigrades. Tardigrades, if you don't know, it's microscopic beings that can survive in outer space and in a very harsh environment. So they wanted to send them there to, I don't know, to let them be there. The problem is that when we registered our mission and declare what we care with us to the United States of America where we launched our spacecraft and to the FAA in particular, we needed to declare exactly what's on board. And they asked specific question about biological payloads and we of course said that no, we don't have any biological material on board. And then this thing exploded in our face, literally. We got a call from the FAA, they wanted answers and well, this is where the lawyers start to work on all sides. We didn't know anything about that. He actually admitted that he never told anyone that that was on board. So actually we can say that it's allegedly on board. We can't even prove that it was there. But we declared that it's not. So that is the problem. Eventually they said that we are cleared of guilt and things went back to normal, if you can say so. But it happened and it means that it can happen again. And it means that we need to be aware that in some cases we might not be fully aware of what we carry with our spacecraft. I mean, we deal with a lot of suppliers and they declare what they give us, but you know, who knows. So maybe we should, I mean, I think it's mandatory to find a way to make sure that we don't carry things that we don't want to carry. It can be something of significance. What if it's a dangerous material that we carry to the ISS, for example, or to other places? I mean, on the Monday, a biological payload doesn't have any effect now, but maybe in the future. Let's just fill that. I want to hear, how does the scientific reaction to tardigrades on the moon, or implications of tardigrades on the moon? Well, there was a lot of outrage, but the moon is classified as the least concern for planetary protection. I think there's four categories. It's the lowest category. And the only requirement for planetary protection for the moon is that you have to declare what you're taking to the moon. And it would be approved, you know, if they had said we want to take tardigrades, there was no basis to disapprove it, but they broke the regulation because there was no opportunity to review it. So that was the problem. But it shouldn't cause any problem. We don't think anything can live on the moon, not even tardigrades. But there is water on the moon. Is there any chance that they could be rehydrated? No. Well, the water on the moon is like 40 degrees above absolute zero, so it's solid form. And it's only in the polar areas. But if you did rehydrate the tardigrades, I don't know if they would survive a lot. I'm not a biologist. Interesting, all right. And I wanted to raise that issue and that fact pattern because it really gets to, you know, all the people who have ambitions to do things on the moon, element of trust between industrial partners is a component of doing things in a sustainable fashion. And also keeping in mind that whatever a nation state does, it is responsible to other actors. So any reactions from? Yeah, actually, I think it's an interesting emerging issue about how we authorize future lunar missions and payloads, especially on the commercial front, because now you have this interesting phenomenon where there is a payload inside the rover, which is inside the lander that might be carrying like eight other different payloads from commercial and international partners. So I believe now we are authorizing more like the umbrella mission, the lander, while we're not really going into the various different levels of payloads that might be included. So yeah, I think national processes for authorizing these missions might start to think about these extra layers of complexity from now on. Laura, I want to talk about the same question for you. How can we prevent some things like that and do things in a safe, sustainable, transparent fashion? I think Phil mentioned trust. I think that building trust with this community of operators is very diverse community of operators is a challenge, but that's why it's an imperative, right? And so when you think about things like the Artemis Accords, which we've been hearing a little bit about, that's something that we NASA and the US Department of State launched in 2020, it's a way to reinforce the principles that we've already signed on to through our Space Treaty and other foundational treaties to carry us into this next stage of exploration, right? So from a state perspective, it's an opportunity to reinforce that and to make a political statement that yes, we will abide by that. 20 countries have signed on, which is really exciting. But you know, we're thinking about how can we carry those values onto the other actors, right? The elephant in the room, the private sector, and I think the way we're doing that is we're talking about governance in every single setting. So it's not just about talking about it at the UN, which is of course critical, but when we meet with our industry partners, we talk about that and we talk about the expectations that they do abide by the rules and that they do share that information because we recognize that not just from a strict legal perspective of where liable, but even just this case, it could have had negative consequences to future activities, right? And so we wanna do very critical research and science on the moon. We don't want to inadvertently through a private sector partner who doesn't disclose something, threaten that research. And so I think that's the way we're perceiving it is that's why we have to bring them into these conversations from the beginning and really set those expectations from the get-go. And of course, I enforce that through, is it licensing, is it contract vehicles, is it other ways? But that, I think it's building that trust and being very firm about this is how we expect you to operate. And these are the rules we're gonna follow as well, which is just as important. So I have a question, it's hypothetical. You guys do not have to answer, I'm not gonna put you on the spot, but I would say someone who appears to have, who we think have smuggled things to the moon, should they be allowed to go back to the moon? Should they be allowed to return with their missions and programs? Or once you've proven that you're not gonna be transparent, is that an activity that, well, that's it, we're not gonna let you back. That's a hypothetical question for my panel and maybe for the folks in the audience. I wanna talk about the fact that there's some activities we wanna do on the moon that once you do them, they may prejudice or interfere with other later activities. So if you wanna do space science and learn about formation of the moon, but the miners get there first, will your activities be just ruined? Is there, what's the component of that? How do you see that? Yeah, so first of all, it's a great question and I actually did some research on the relationship of economic activity and scientific progress and although there are cases and opportunities for conflict and harm, as you've just described, the overall relationship I wanna emphasize is that they're synergistic. The vast majority of geological data that we have about planet Earth came from mining, from petroleum extraction, from economic activity. I mean, overwhelmingly the vast majority of data. And I've looked in the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and 95% of Earth scientists are working in economic applications, 5% are in academia, being funded by their students who are 95% going into economic activities. So it's overwhelmingly the more economic activity you do, the more progress you have in science, the more access to data, the more infrastructure, the more development that provides the tools the scientist needs and there have been papers showing the correlation. So if we manage it appropriately, it can be a win-win situation, but we do need to worry about the cases where they can conflict. For example, the ice in the poles of the moon is really super valuable scientifically. We wanna understand the chemistry, we wanna understand from what part of the solar system did it come and when. But we don't want a whole bunch of rockets blowing rocket exhaust in there freezing in mixing with the ice to mess up the chemistry. Now, maybe that won't happen, but we need to be careful to think about it to make sure it doesn't happen. So that's an example where we need to be careful about it. One thing we might consider doing is putting a requirement on economic activities that they provide data back to the scientific communities of the world in order to be compliant with the Outer Space Treaty. So that the activity, that could be a component of making your activity before the common good of humanity. So if all of the mining companies were required to provide samples and chemistry and geochemistry that they're accessing, it could be a real boon to science. Yeah, and I'll add that another principle that we emphasize in the Artemis Accords is this idea of sharing scientific information and data. And that ties into making sure that the benefits of space benefit the world. And so I think when we drill those samples and we have to make sure that we're sharing that information across the science community so that everybody doesn't have to take their own seashell when they go to the beach, right? And so I think that it paired with that coordination for resources that are gonna be a lot harder to share will hopefully minimize some of those negative consequences. I'd like to mention one statistic. We visit a small body in the solar system on average once every two years. And at that rate, we're gonna visit them all within about 10 million years, all the ones of our certain size. So it's not like we're gonna run out of small bodies by mining them, but if we do mine them, we will have vastly more access to the data. The moon is a little bit more of a concern though, because the moon is doing one move. Just the one, yeah. All right, I wanna hear more about how we develop rules and specific rules for specific locations. Do you think we need a specific regime for mining on the moon, a specific regime, or set of rules for the poles of the moon or the far side of the moon in order to protect and really balance the activities that are happening there? I mean, how do you see this normative framework developing? Tough question, I know. Well, I'm not sure if we need a specific regime, but maybe we'll have like a more near-term coordination issue. For example, we have all these upcoming clips missions, but also international landers that are going to the moon next year even, and then potentially, we might have larger landers like Starship, we can get hundreds of tons to the surface. So I was wondering if, as a first step, maybe the science community would have to come together, international science community, and maybe coordinate some landing sites or locations that we steer all international commercial missions towards there, so we kind of minimize the impact on the lunar environment from potential dust glooms or even start thinking about how we could create landing parts and feel, I believe, we'll have more to add there. But yeah, I believe some kind of coordination around landing areas might be needed there, certainly. OK, good. I actually feel that does tee up for a question about lunar dust and landing pads. Please, actually, you may need to explain the issue and the problem, but. OK, yeah, so I was tweeting about it a few days ago, and so here's a humorous way to look at it. In the movies, like the Hollywood movies, whenever there's a big, giant explosion, they always have that actor walking away from it with the big explosion right behind them, and they never flinch, you know, they're so cool, they don't even have to look at it. And the reason they can do that is because they know that if you're a couple hundred meters away, you're safe. Well, why is that? Well, because we have an atmosphere, and the atmosphere provides drag so that the particles stop, and they don't go more than a couple hundred meters, but the moon doesn't have an atmosphere. So when you land on the moon, you're sort of creating a continuous explosion, providing high energy, hot gases, which are going to accelerate ejecta. And the ejecta is going to get up to the speed of the gas, and then it'll never slow down. And the finest particles will get up to the speed of the rocket exhaust. Now for the Apollo lunar module, that was 3,100 meters per second, which is about 50% faster, I don't know, 30% faster than the escape velocity from the moon. The larger particles will go slower, but that means there is no distance on the moon where you're far enough away to have zero probability of getting impacted. There's, you know, anywhere on the moon is a target. And so this is for a large lander. And so we've got to agree, well, how far away is far enough? We're not going to have zero damage. Every time you land on the moon, you're going to have fine particles, sandblasting, everything else on the moon. So the outer space treaty says, I don't know the exact words, but you're supposed to do no harm. Well, we're going to do harm. So we've got to agree on some limit where, okay, so there's going to be harm, but we're going to agree by definition this is no harm. But that's going to take an agreement and it's going to have real consequences because it determines how close you can land next to other things. And it's going to determine whether you're going to be required to build mitigation techniques like landing pads or berms to block the ejecta. So it's a huge policy issue that has international implications. Yeah, and the idea of landing pads being something that is right for international collaboration, cooperation and peaceful uses and like something that would be like a near-term ambitious but useful goal. Yeah, actually there's something called the International Space Exploration Coordination Group where all space agencies that have exploration programs are trying to define the global exploration roadmap for moon and Mars. And very recently it was decided to establish a working group that will be looking into technology knowledge gaps for creating landing pads. So probably next year there might be a report around the landing pads coming out. I want to ask and maybe get a little bit political about the conceptions of the ideas, the sentiment that exists out there about gold rush and land grab and space and the idea that development of the moon could be inequitable or those who'd get there first get all the best places and the best prizes and those who come later get what remains. Are you worried about that and is that a real concern? And if it is then how do we avoid that and not repeat some mistakes that we see here on Earth and history? Tough one. I mean, first of all I want to acknowledge that even though we feel that we are in this new era of human exploration with all the upcoming missions we still, it's been more than 50 years since we last landed successfully on the moon so it's something extremely hard and still we need a lot of things to go well to start having these surface activities that we all hope. So things are kind of still a bit more slow and scientific but at the same time I want to say that there are some game changing parameters in development. So for example, as I said before, something like StarSafe would totally change the way we develop payloads or how we do operations or how long we can stay on the surface of the moon. And I feel like the space and lunar community hasn't really reflected on the potential impact it would create, right? So like if you can suddenly land hundreds of tones on the moon every couple of weeks, yeah, like what kind of payloads we're gonna bring and like can you create a moon base from the moment you land, right? So yeah, I would like to see the space community more thinking around these game-sensing aspects of the gun. I'm casually optimistic that the urgency that we've talked about the last day and a half about sustainability challenges on earth and around earth have sort of catalyzed to have those discussions around lunar governance. I think there's enough momentum to do that while we have a little bit of time, right? From a US government perspective, we think about it from the sense that as others have mentioned that the principles we set now are gonna sustain themselves for a long time and so we have an obligation to get it right. And we wanna make sure they're democratic principles and those we share with like-minded nations and I think that's really important. So even if we, I don't necessarily buy the hype of we're in a race and I don't think that's necessarily productive discussion like I said, we're thinking about sustainability both in the sense of how you do that and the implications but also sustainability then we can keep going back. So from that sense that the narrative of the race isn't as helpful but I'm also not trying to look at it with rose-colored eyes but my hope is that we are having the right conversations today so that this activity start actually materializing and we're not just talking about future plans. We can avoid some of those intractable problems I think. It seems like the hidden tension is that on the one hand actors just want to make it happen and do it and have it be successful because it is so challenging. At the same time, the other issue is that what you do sets a precedent and other people will be looking for it as setting the rules of how we can behave. Nelly, you had something to say? Yeah, slightly counter point of view actually. The narrative of the race, I agree overall is not a very helpful one but it gets things done. So, you know, thinking from a commercial point of view, we're here, I'm representing a company that's not in scientific research, we are there to provide infrastructure services that enable the scientific research. If we have all the time in the world and we know that the place is safe and secure and everybody will have a place and there is no gold rush, no competition, whether we have time, we don't necessarily need to invest, we don't necessarily need to take risk. And I think a little bit of, hang on, there is a kind of race here and you need not to be sitting comfortably on your chair and you need to go and get your investors and you need to go and take risk is helpful to a certain extent. And I think that's a great example of that's why it's complex, right? Because I'm coming at it and the regulators are gonna come at it with different sort of expectations and desires, has a private sector, but I wanna help make you successful, right? And so we're gonna try to come together and balance that and it's gonna be complicated and challenging, right? But I think if the narrative is helpful for the private sector that's great from a government perspective, we're gonna think of equity, for example, and making sure that those two companies that are the first aren't the only ones that make it, right? And so hopefully at the end then what's actually written down in law and regulation which takes its time helps enable that, helps you be successful but keeps the door open so that, yeah, you know, others can. It's a balancing act, it's in between the private sector and the institutions which is why commercial partnerships that we're doing with ESA on the model as well that NASA is doing with other private companies is very helpful. We're pushing, we're going for the gold rush and we're being managed at the same time. Yeah. You have, do you resonate with that? The idea that on the one hand, yeah, you wanna have your commercial company successful and yet at the same time what you do is setting, will be precedent setting and people will be looking at it. Do you take that into account? Yeah, I do. And I think as a mature person, I hope so. I want to think about the things that I might do for the first time. I want to think about them in the most responsible way because this will define how others will act. And maybe even to set an example, I want to do things right. I don't want to interfere with others. I don't want to do things in the state of mind of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. Because I think we have a good opportunity to actually do something good here after we did a lot of wrongs here on Earth. So it's not just in the legal aspects, it's also about how we do things that with respect to other cultures and other nations and other people on the Earth that, as you said before, that don't have access to space resources because they never launched a satellite or anything else to space. I think we need to think about that and to take that into account and it's our responsibility. Even if our business case is pure commercial, we need to be responsible. Well, do you think that you will be setting precedent and how you behave and how you act is driven by commercial concerns and being successful and making the mission successful. Why do you think it should be down to you to determine what behavior should be? Would you not be willing to allow that discussion to happen on a multilateral international basis, on a national basis and for other people to weigh in and say, this is what you want to do, but the world says no, we think that that's not the best idea. No, I want to be involved in such discussions. I think I am involved in a way, at least in some of those. I have limited amount of time, but I think that, yeah, I'm positive that we can do it and we have a bit of time before we arrive to the moon. So I think we're in the, that we can do it right this time. Nelly, any reactions? I mean, how would you feel if the United Nations Security Council said, decided that what you want to do on the moon, they would not allow it and they decide, not you. I think we'd be very happy to discuss it. We've been working with the agencies from the first concept of what we're doing and what we've always said is that we will be compliant. So we're designing with compliance in mind. Now it's compliant to Issa and Nasser's view. So is there was a third body saying, well, no, that doesn't work. It wouldn't be a conversation between the SSTL and the UN. That would be a much broader conversation that I have full trust that because there are a vast number of intelligent people that will be talking about the topic that we would get to a resolution that we could make work. So that doesn't scare me. So in DCA, Space Policy Expert has opined that those who go first, set the rules. That the first actor to do something sets the rules for those later time. That's a principle maybe of history, but that exists nowhere as a principle of international law. And I think the reality is there's some truth to that and which is why we're not just sitting back and letting things happen. We want, the US wants to lead and wants to lead with our partners and wants to make sure that these principles that have served us well, the last 50, 60 years, are the ones that we carry forward. So I think there's a truth to that, but not in the, you know, I plant the flag and therefore it is mine, right? I don't think that's how anyone should look at it. Certainly. So for our audience, we're still taking questions on the HUVA app. You can submit your questions and go for other questions. I've had a look at them, tried to reflect what is in there. But as we look to start to ramping up our panel, actually had some time, I do wanna ask our panel a little bit more about that idea of who's gonna be setting precedence on the moon, how long that discussion and coordination should last. If you're a regulator, let's say you're a regulator and you get approached by one actor who wants to mine on the moon for commercial purposes to sell to the governments and industry. They have a commercial ambition on the moon. At the same time, the scientific community wants to go into the same area and do some scientific investigations. And really, how do you balance those? And let's say that they pretty strongly conflict with each other, that the mining activity will directly affect the scientific investigations. Who gets to go first? Well, my hope is that, you know, that that company starts with the licensing process and all that stuff, right? And that enables some inter-agency conversations and that enables agencies like NASA to look at the scientific implications and all that. And then hopefully that opens the doors to the sort of conversations that Suri has been having with its stakeholders. I think it'd be, I think an actor that just tries to go in a very isolated way is not gonna succeed because a lot of what we're talking about is in either, it's not very clear. Some of these, especially the new ideas that aren't necessarily spelled out in the regulations and the legislation that we have require that conversation and require people asking questions and understanding the implications of those actions. So I'm not that, like I don't really see that being approved. And then, oh, the science world is ruined, right? I see that that's gonna open the door to a lot of discussion and maybe that actor is gonna feel like, oh, it's taking too long, but that needs to happen. I wanna take a step back actually. Phil, how rival risks are some of these places? It seems like all the interest is lunar south pole, lunar north pole, maybe some places on the far side. But are there rival risk activities in locations all over? Well, there's potential for that. I don't think there is yet. I don't, I mean, there are a lot of companies that are looking at doing mining and manufacturing and construction in space. And they're starting to develop the technologies and they've got business models and investors. So it's coming really soon. Within just years, we're gonna be seeing activities that are economic in nature reaching to the lunar surface. But I don't think those kind of conflicts are happening yet because nobody has filed for the mission approval where they've stated this is where we're gonna go. And I think everybody's keeping their plans secret for business reasons right now. But I know from working in this community for decades that there's a fear on the business side. The people on the business side and like me, we really believe that it's for the good of humanity to extend economic activity off the earth. Partly so that we can relieve the burden of the earth and partly so that we can create a greater, more exciting and beneficial civilization when we're not limited to the planetary scale. And when you look at the broad trajectory of civilization over millennia and especially since the industrial revolution and the information revolution, technology is growing and it's accelerating. And so it doesn't take too much extrapolation to realize we will have the technologies, we will have the economic capability within decades to have a much bigger and vibrant civilization outside of planet earth. And so a lot of people I know on the commercial side are very optimistic. I don't know anybody who isn't. And not just optimistic, but they believe that they're doing it for the good of humanity. And they're very much afraid of regulation. They're afraid that jealousy or other human emotions are going to shut it down and that the whole human species will suffer as a result of not being able to get over this hurdle. I mean, so we see that there can be regulation and norm making on a variety of levels at the international level may happen at the United Nations. It may happen at the national level through national regulation or you say how NASA or ESA would implement its activities and programs. Norms may also be set at the lower level between industrial partners or imposed on commercial actors. And all of those locations are places where norms may be created. Top down, bottom up, et cetera, et cetera. Really it will be that idea of polycentricity, of norms and rules and discussions happening and in fact competing. So we have discussions which may happen at the United Nations. We have discussions and some rule making which may happen at the lower level including civil society with the Moon Village Association and their Gagsled Group which I believe you have a couple of representatives of who are looking at what we'd like to do on the moon. I mentioned the Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group in their building blocks not just for lunar space resources but space resources elsewhere. So you see that there's these variety of norm making areas. I say all that just to start to look to wrap up our panel and see any final thoughts that we would like to hear although you've already given some broad sweeping historical, philosophical final thoughts. But so I'll start actually over at the end with Yoav and Nelly. Final thoughts on lunar governance, where to go and what you'd like to see done, what's most pressing. What I'd like to see done for me is clarity. I think that the most important thing if we want the lunar economy to be a success is to be able to invest whether it's on the institutional side whether it's on the commercial side, mostly done together. And we need clarity. What are we building the business on? Are the missions we are going to support capable of sustainability because they have the clarity of what they're going to be able to do as well. So wherever the regulation is done what I would like is for it to be clear, for it to be one voice. We don't want to have to abide by contradictory regulations depending on who we are talking to. And that's a bonus enforceable so that we know that we are going to abide by it but we're not the only one, everybody is. So I completely agree with that but I want to add that it needs to be very inclusive. We need to talk with everyone. Let's not forget that only the Chinese landed on the moon since the 70s and they're doing it greatly. They landed three times, one time on the far side of the moon which was first, it was the first. And we need to be in discussions with them about what we're going to do because we cannot just regulate them for example and we don't expect them to regulate other activities. So it needs to be within the same global community. So yeah, I think this is a complementary to what I'm saying. Thank you. Yeah, I'll build on that. I do think it is a challenge to keep all those different conversations coordinated and that's what keeps me employed so it's good. But I think that is the challenge but it stems from that value and that commitment to being inclusive and to recognize that it's not going to be that domain of the feel anymore, it can't be. And so I think maintaining that momentum and that openness, that transparency is gonna be important and the other kind of theme I'll end on is kind of a parallel to the conversations we have over the last day and a half and like the ASAP panel we had earlier today, there is a difference between intentional activities meant to do harm and meant to interfere and all that and those I think are fortunately the minimum, right? For the most part what we talked about today are the unintentional ones where everyone comes at it with the same sort of intentions and objectives but we recognize that there's limitations that we need to coordinate, right? And so I think that's part of why we're trying to create this coalition of the willing that includes industry, that includes other countries because in that strength is where we're gonna find the opportunities to really stop and reduce the risk of some of the more harmful behavior from really taking hold. I think that's the opportunity to make that the gold standard and be like, that's how we're gonna explore moving forward. Well what comes to mind is that for the last 15 or so years like the international exploration road maps are being created only by government actors like space agencies or at the UNOSA level. We have mainly inputs by countries so there is no clear mechanism yet for the commercial entities to contribute either to the UNOSA processes or the space resources working group that has been created now but also on the more technical road map aspect. It's still like something developed by space agencies while we see that there are companies that have more ambitious exploration road maps than the space agencies themselves how we could create a process to have a mutually reinforcing road map being created and also because between the commercial entities there is always the element of competition, how we incentivize them to be more open to information sharing and like collaborative so we don't have like the vacation of systems or redundant systems. So like I feel like we need a better way to organize this public and private collaboration overall. Excellent, thank you. Dr. Metzger, any last words? Yeah, to round out what I said last time. Yes. So there is some fear about policy being restrictive but on the other hand I think most people I work with realize that we need policy because policy creates the permission for one thing. It creates the legal safe harbor where you can operate. It removes risk which makes it more welcoming to investment and so most people I know do want policy. There is some fear of if policy goes astray but what we need policy, most people I know realize we've got to have it and we're behind the curve. We got to get going on this and the other thing I want to emphasize is what Laura said about inclusivity. What I just said a moment ago about this is the trajectory of civilization. If it really happens that we end up with a vastly bigger more vibrant civilization where most of it is happening off the planet. How are we going to make sure that all the people of the earth own that? The economic level for entry is higher than most activities because you need rockets and space ships and space suits and not every country is a spacefaring country and not every person in a spacefaring country is in a position to get equity in an aerospace company so we've got to find ways to create avenues of participation and ownership for the broad swaths of humanity in order to make civilization beyond earth belong to all of us. There you have it folks. How about a round of applause for this excellent panel. Thank you.