What is Cislunar Space and Why is It Important?

The Next Strategic Frontier

For more than half a century, human activity in space has been largely confined to the near-Earth environment, a relatively predictable region dominated by our planet’s gravity. This era established Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) as the primary domains for satellites, space stations, and scientific observation. Today, the frontier is rapidly expanding outward into a vast, complex, and strategically vital region known as cislunar space. This domain, encompassing the immense volume between the Earth and the Moon, is the arena for the next great phase of exploration, commerce, and geopolitical competition.

The renewed push into cislunar space is not a simple repeat of the Apollo-era race for prestige. While national pride remains a factor, the motivations are now far more complex and intertwined, involving a diverse cast of governments and private companies with ambitious scientific, economic, and security objectives. The current era is defined by a fundamental shift in philosophy – from the temporary achievement of planting a flag to the long-term goal of building a permanent and economically self-sustaining extension of human activity off-planet.

This change is reflected in the language of modern space strategies, which emphasize concepts like “sustainable ecosystems,” “enduring presence,” and a “cislunar economy”. Achieving permanence requires what the missions of the 20th century did not: long-term infrastructure for power, communications, and navigation, and a compelling economic reason to stay, such as the utilization of lunar resources. Consequently, the current endeavors in cislunar space are less about reaching a destination and more about building a persistent, value-generating foothold in the solar system.

Defining the Cislunar Domain

What is Cislunar Space?

In simple terms, cislunar space is the region of space between the Earth and the Moon. While its boundaries are not strictly defined, the domain is generally considered to begin beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, which lies at an altitude of approximately 36,000 kilometers (about 22,236 miles), and extends to include the Moon’s orbit and the volume of space immediately surrounding it.

The scale of this region is immense. The Moon orbits at an average distance of 384,400 kilometers (nearly 239,000 miles), and the U.S. Space Force’s operational sphere of interest is now considered to extend out to 272,000 miles (about 438,000 km) and beyond. This represents a thousand-fold expansion in service volume compared to the traditional focus on near-Earth orbits. The volume of cislunar space is estimated to be roughly 10,000 times that of the GEO belt, creating a frontier of staggering size.

A Realm of Complex Gravity

The single most important characteristic of cislunar space is its complex gravitational environment. Unlike in near-Earth orbits, where Earth’s gravity is the overwhelmingly dominant force, an object in cislunar space is significantly influenced by the gravitational pull of both the Earth and the Moon simultaneously. This constant gravitational tug-of-war creates a dynamic and at times chaotic environment that is fundamentally different from the relatively predictable physics of LEO and GEO.

This dual influence means that the simple, elliptical orbits described by Keplerian mechanics, which work well for near-Earth satellites, no longer apply. Instead, navigating cislunar space becomes a version of the “three-body problem” (Earth, Moon, and spacecraft), a notoriously complex scenario in physics with no simple analytical solution. The trajectory of a spacecraft is not a neat ellipse but a winding, intricate path shaped by its journey through the competing gravitational wells of two celestial bodies.

This complexity makes “cislunar” less a geographic location and more a functional or dynamical regime. The boundary isn’t a fixed line in space but rather a transitional zone where the rules of celestial mechanics change. An object crossing into this zone requires a completely different set of tools and assumptions for navigation, propulsion, and mission planning. It is this functional distinction that makes cislunar space both a significant challenge and a domain rich with unique opportunities.

Navigating the Earth-Moon System

The complex interplay of gravity in the Earth-Moon system gives rise to a variety of unique orbits and pathways that are impossible to achieve near Earth. These “exotic” trajectories are the key to operating efficiently in cislunar space, offering novel ways to travel, park, and observe.

Exotic Orbits and Pathways

Motion in cislunar space is often non-Keplerian, meaning it doesn’t follow the simple conic sections (circles, ellipses) that describe orbits around a single body. Instead, trajectories can be categorized into several types:

• Periodic Orbits: These are paths that repeat over time, though they often have complex, three-dimensional shapes. A spacecraft in a periodic orbit will return to its starting position and velocity after a set period. Halo orbits are a well-known example.
• Quasi-Periodic Orbits: These trajectories do not form a perfectly closed loop. Instead, a spacecraft in such an orbit traces a path that covers a surface, like winding a string around a donut, without ever exactly repeating its previous path.
• Chaotic Motion: In some regions, tiny changes in a spacecraft’s initial position or velocity can lead to dramatically different paths over time. While this instability can be a challenge, it can also be leveraged to create low-energy transfers between different orbits with minimal fuel.

A important feature of these orbits is the existence of stable and unstable manifolds. These can be visualized as invisible “tubes” or “currents” in space that flow into and out of certain orbits. By carefully targeting an unstable manifold, a spacecraft can be guided into a desired orbit using very little propellant, essentially riding the natural dynamics of the system.

Key Orbital Destinations

Mission planners have identified several families of cislunar orbits that are particularly useful for different objectives. The choice of orbit involves a careful balance of factors like fuel efficiency, stability, access to the lunar surface, and communication with Earth.

• Low Lunar Orbit (LLO): An orbit just 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) above the Moon’s surface, LLO was the staging orbit for the Apollo missions. It offers the most direct and lowest-energy access to any point on the lunar surface. However, it is gravitationally unstable due to irregularities in the Moon’s mass, requiring significant fuel for station-keeping – over 50 meters per second (m/s) of velocity change per year. Furthermore, a spacecraft in LLO is blocked from direct line-of-sight communication with Earth for roughly half of its two-hour orbit. These drawbacks make it unsuitable for a long-term station but ideal for the final phase of a landing mission.
• Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO): A very large, stable orbit located far from the Moon, with a period of about two weeks. A spacecraft in a DRO moves in the opposite direction to the Moon’s own motion around the Earth. Its most remarkable feature is its extreme stability; it requires virtually zero fuel for station-keeping. This makes it an excellent candidate for a future propellant depot or a long-term staging point for missions into deep space, where assets could be parked for extended periods with no maintenance.
• Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO): This orbit is a “sweet spot” that balances stability, access, and communications. An NRHO is a highly elongated, seven-day polar orbit that takes a spacecraft as close as 1,600 km (1,000 miles) to one lunar pole and as far as 70,000 km (43,000 miles) over the other. It is remarkably stable, requiring less than 10 m/s of station-keeping per year. Because it is a “halo” orbit, it remains almost fixed relative to the Earth-Moon line, allowing for continuous, uninterrupted communication with Earth. Its high inclination provides excellent, regular access to the lunar polar regions, which are of high interest for their water ice deposits. For these reasons, the NRHO was selected as the destination for the Lunar Gateway space station.
• Halo and Lissajous Orbits: These are three-dimensional, looping orbits that can be established around the gravitationally balanced Lagrange points. They are valuable for science and communications. China’s Queqiao-1 satellite, for instance, uses a halo orbit around the Earth-Moon L2 point to act as a constant communications relay for its missions on the far side of the Moon, which never faces Earth.

The selection of an orbit is a complex exercise in trade-offs. LLO provides the best access but is fuel-intensive. DRO offers the best stability but is far away. NRHO represents a carefully calculated compromise, sacrificing the perfect stability of a DRO and the direct access of an LLO for a combination of very good stability, excellent communications, and regular, low-energy access to the lunar poles. This highlights the nuanced operational planning required to function effectively in the cislunar domain.

Gravitational Crossroads: The Lagrange Points

Within the cislunar system, there are five special locations known as Lagrange points, named after the 18th-century mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange who discovered them. At these points, the gravitational pull from the Earth and the Moon, combined with the centrifugal force of orbital motion, balance each other out perfectly. This creates regions of equilibrium where a spacecraft can effectively “park” and maintain its position relative to the Earth and Moon with very little fuel. These points are often referred to as the “prime real estate” of cislunar space.

The five Earth-Moon Lagrange points are:

• L1, L2, and L3: These three points lie along the line connecting the Earth and the Moon. They are dynamically unstable, often compared to a marble balanced on a saddle. A spacecraft placed at one of these points will tend to drift away without regular, small propulsive maneuvers to keep it in place.
  • L1 is located between the Earth and the Moon and serves as a natural gateway for transportation between the two bodies.
  • L2 lies on the far side of the Moon from Earth. Its location makes it an ideal spot for a communications relay satellite to service the lunar far side.
  • L3 is on the far side of the Earth from the Moon, in a similar orbit, but is of less practical use because the Earth (and Sun) would always block communications.
• L4 and L5: These two points form the third vertex of an equilateral triangle with the Earth and the Moon. L4 leads the Moon in its orbit by 60 degrees, while L5 trails it by 60 degrees. Unlike the other three points, L4 and L5 are gravitationally stable, akin to a marble resting in a wide bowl. Objects placed here will tend to stay, and these points can naturally capture dust and asteroids over long periods. In the Earth-Moon system, faint concentrations of dust known as the Kordylewski clouds are believed to exist at L4 and L5. This inherent stability makes them ideal locations for future large-scale, permanent infrastructure, such as space habitats or manufacturing facilities, that would be difficult to maintain at an unstable point.

The Strategic Imperative

The growing interest in cislunar space is driven by more than scientific curiosity. It is fueled by a convergence of powerful geopolitical, economic, and long-term exploratory ambitions that make this domain a critical arena for 21st-century leadership.

Geopolitical High Ground

Cislunar space is increasingly viewed as the ultimate strategic “high ground”. From a military perspective, controlling key locations in this region could offer a commanding position over the entire Earth-Moon system. This perception has ignited a new space race, primarily between the United States and China, with both nations investing heavily to establish a presence, develop operational capabilities, and set the norms of behavior in this new domain.

The competition is characterized by starkly different approaches. The United States is leading a broad international coalition under the banner of the Artemis Accords, a set of principles promoting peaceful, cooperative, and transparent exploration. In contrast, China’s strategic discourse, which has compared the Moon to the first island chain in the Western Pacific, suggests a more territorial approach focused on regional access denial and clandestine activities.

This strategic competition has prompted the U.S. Space Force to officially expand its operational responsibilities to include the vast cislunar volume, recognizing that ensuring freedom of operation in this domain is essential to protecting future U.S. national interests. The Lagrange points, particularly the stable L4 and L5 points, are seen as especially valuable strategic assets. The nation that controls these gravitationally stable points could potentially dominate transit throughout the Earth-Moon system.

An Economic Engine

The long-term vision for cislunar development is the creation of a vibrant, self-sustaining economy independent of Earth. This vision is predicated on the concept of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) – the ability to “live off the land” by harvesting and using local resources. The Moon is believed to harbor several resources of immense economic and strategic value:

• Water Ice: Data from previous missions strongly suggests that significant deposits of water ice exist in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. This is arguably the most valuable resource. Water can be used for life support for astronauts, but more importantly, it can be split into its constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen, which are the primary components of powerful rocket propellant. The ability to manufacture fuel on the Moon could transform space exploration, turning the Moon into a refueling station for missions heading to Mars and beyond, drastically reducing the cost and complexity of deep space travel.
• Helium-3: The lunar soil is rich in Helium-3, a rare isotope on Earth, deposited by billions of years of solar wind. Helium-3 is a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors, which could provide a clean and powerful energy source.
• Rare-Earth Elements: The Moon’s geology is also thought to contain concentrations of rare-earth elements and other valuable metals like titanium and platinum, which are vital for modern electronics, defense systems, and industrial processes on Earth.

The pursuit of these resources is a powerful driver of the new space race. The finite nature of resource-rich locations, like the Shackleton Crater at the South Pole, creates a powerful incentive to establish an early presence to secure future access. This economic potential is inextricably linked to the geopolitical competition; the ability to exploit lunar resources provides a massive strategic advantage by reducing reliance on costly Earth-based supply chains. This dynamic creates a feedback loop where the drive for economic gain necessitates a security presence to protect assets and claims, which in turn intensifies the competition for control of the cislunar high ground.

A Proving Ground for Deep Space

Cislunar space serves as an indispensable stepping stone for humanity’s expansion into the solar system. It acts as a “bridge” and a proving ground for the technologies and operational concepts needed for future crewed missions to Mars and other deep space destinations.

Operating in the cislunar environment allows space agencies and companies to test and validate critical systems in a relevant deep-space environment, which includes high radiation, vacuum, and extreme temperatures. This includes testing long-duration habitats, closed-loop life support systems, advanced propulsion technologies, and radiation shielding. The Lunar Gateway is a central component of this strategy, designed to be a testbed for these systems.

Critically, this testing can be done with the safety net that Earth is only a few days’ travel away, rather than the months-long journey to Mars. This makes cislunar space the ideal place to gain the experience, work out the technical challenges, and build the confidence needed before undertaking the far more perilous and ambitious journey to another planet.

A New Era of Lunar Missions

The renewed focus on cislunar space has catalyzed a new generation of ambitious lunar programs around the globe. These missions are no longer isolated sprints but are part of long-term, architectural plans to establish a permanent human and robotic presence on and around the Moon.

The Artemis Program: A Return to the Moon

Leading the charge is NASA’s Artemis program, a U.S.-led international endeavor to return humans to the Moon in a sustainable manner. The program’s stated goals are not only to land astronauts on the lunar surface but to do so with the first woman and first person of color, establish a long-term presence, and use the experience gained to prepare for future missions to Mars. The architectural backbone of Artemis consists of the super-heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion deep-space crew capsule.

The program is structured as a series of progressively more complex missions:

• Artemis I (Completed): Launched in November 2022, this was a successful uncrewed test flight of the SLS and Orion, sending the capsule on a journey around the Moon and farther into deep space than any human-rated spacecraft has ever gone.
• Artemis II (Planned for early 2026): This will be the first crewed flight of the program, taking four astronauts on a flyby trajectory around the Moon before returning to Earth.
• Artemis III (Planned for mid-2027): This mission aims to be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Astronauts will travel to lunar orbit in Orion and then transfer to a commercially provided Human Landing System (HLS) for the descent to the surface.
• Artemis IV and V (Planned for 2028 and 2030): These missions will continue with crewed landings while also delivering the core components of the Lunar Gateway space station to its orbit around the Moon.

The Lunar Gateway: Humanity’s Outpost

Central to the Artemis architecture is the Lunar Gateway, a small, human-tended space station planned for a Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). Unlike the continuously occupied International Space Station (ISS), the Gateway is designed to be a multi-purpose outpost that can operate autonomously for long periods and host crews for shorter durations. It will serve as a command and communications hub, a science laboratory, and a staging point for missions to the lunar surface and, eventually, to Mars.

The Gateway is a major international collaboration, with key modules being contributed by partner agencies:

• Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO): These foundational NASA-led modules will provide power, propulsion, maneuvering, communications, and initial living quarters. They are scheduled to launch together on a Falcon Heavy rocket no earlier than 2027.
• International Habitation Module (I-HAB): Provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), this module will expand the living and working space for astronauts.
• ESPRIT Refueling Module: An ESA contribution that will provide additional communications and the ability to refuel the Gateway.
• Canadarm3: A robotic arm provided by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for external maintenance, operations, and science.

While integral to NASA’s plans, the Gateway concept has faced criticism for being an expensive and complex intermediate step that adds time and propellant requirements to lunar landing missions. Proponents argue its value as a long-term, reusable piece of infrastructure for science and deep space staging outweighs the costs of a direct-to-surface approach.

International Ambitions

The cislunar domain is decidedly multipolar. While the U.S. leads a large coalition, a parallel effort is being spearheaded by China. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has achieved remarkable success with its Chang’e series of robotic lunar missions, including landing on the far side of the Moon and returning lunar samples.

Building on this success, China, in partnership with Russia’s Roscosmos and a growing list of other nations, is planning to build the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). The ILRS is envisioned as a comprehensive scientific research base located near the lunar south pole, intended to be a direct competitor to the U.S.-led Artemis Base Camp.

These two major initiatives – the U.S.-led Artemis program centered on the Gateway and the China-led ILRS – are creating a “duopoly of architectures” in cislunar space. Most other spacefaring nations, including emerging powers like India, Japan, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, are developing their own lunar missions but are largely aligning with one of these two major frameworks. This bifurcation is not just technical but deeply geopolitical. The choice of which program to join carries political implications, and the lack of interoperability between the two competing ecosystems could lead to separate standards for communications, navigation, and hardware, potentially complicating global space traffic management and creating distinct spheres of influence in the Earth-Moon system.

The Rise of the Commercial Cislunar Sector

A defining feature of the new space era is the central role of the private sector. Unlike the government-dominated programs of the 20th century, cislunar development is being driven by a dynamic partnership between public agencies and a growing ecosystem of innovative commercial companies.

Pioneering Private Companies

A host of private firms are developing the core technologies needed to access and operate in cislunar space. These range from established aerospace giants to agile startups:

• Launch and Lander Developers: Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are at the forefront. SpaceX is developing its fully reusable Starship vehicle to serve as the Human Landing System for early Artemis missions, while Blue Origin is developing its Blue Moon lander for later missions. United Launch Alliance (ULA) is also positioning its new Vulcan Centaur rocket for cislunar operations.
• Dedicated Lunar Delivery Services: A new market has emerged for companies that specialize in transporting payloads to the lunar surface. Astrobotic Technology, with its Peregrine and Griffin landers, and Firefly Aerospace, with its Blue Ghost lander, are key players. Intuitive Machines successfully landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the Moon in February 2024, becoming the first private company to achieve this milestone. These companies offer end-to-end delivery services for science instruments, rovers, and other cargo.

New Business Models

This commercial growth is being actively fostered by a fundamental shift in how governments, particularly NASA, approach space exploration. Instead of designing, owning, and operating all its own hardware, the government is increasingly acting as a customer and an anchor tenant for commercial services.

The most prominent example of this is NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Under CLPS, NASA doesn’t buy a lander; it buys a delivery service. The agency provides a scientific instrument and pays a company like Firefly or Intuitive Machines to transport it to a specific location on the Moon. This model achieves two goals simultaneously: it allows NASA to conduct science at a lower cost and with less overhead, and it provides the guaranteed revenue that allows a commercial lunar delivery market to exist. Private companies can then sell any excess capacity on their landers to other customers, such as universities, foreign space agencies, or other companies, creating a viable business.

This approach is evolving further into the concept of infrastructure-as-a-service. A leading example is Crescent Space Services, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, which plans to build and operate the Parsec network – a constellation of satellites that will provide communications and navigation services to any mission operating on or around the Moon. Instead of each mission having to build its own complex communication system, it could simply subscribe to Crescent’s service.

This shift in strategy – from the government as the sole owner and operator to the government as a foundational customer – is deliberately designed to cultivate a robust and competitive commercial ecosystem. By providing the initial demand, the government helps these private companies build their capabilities, which in turn drives down costs, spurs innovation, and ultimately creates a self-sustaining cislunar economy where a wide range of public and private actors can operate.

Overcoming Cislunar Challenges

While the opportunities in cislunar space are immense, the challenges are equally formidable. Operating in this distant and hostile environment requires overcoming significant operational hurdles and mitigating the risks of a crowded frontier.

Operational Hurdles

The unique physics and vast scale of the cislunar domain present a new class of operational problems that were not a factor in near-Earth space.

• Space Domain Awareness (SDA): The sheer volume of cislunar space makes tracking objects – active satellites, spent rocket stages, and debris – extremely difficult. Ground-based radars, the workhorses of SDA in Earth orbit, are largely ineffective at lunar distances. Achieving meaningful awareness requires a new architecture of dedicated space-based optical telescopes and other sensors to detect and track faint objects across immense distances. Without robust SDA, safe navigation and traffic management are impossible.
• Communications and Navigation (PNT): Cislunar space lacks a ubiquitous position, navigation, and timing service like the Global Positioning System (GPS) that we rely on at Earth. Communicating with a spacecraft near the Moon involves a round-trip signal delay of up to 2.4 seconds. This delay makes real-time remote control or tele-operation of robotic systems impossible, necessitating high levels of spacecraft autonomy for tasks like docking, landing, and maneuvering. Establishing a reliable and interoperable communications and PNT infrastructure is a top priority for enabling a sustainable cislunar ecosystem.
• Complex Orbital Dynamics: As discussed, the chaotic and unstable nature of many cislunar orbits requires highly sophisticated mission design and continuous, autonomous course corrections to stay on a desired trajectory. This adds a layer of computational and operational complexity far beyond what is needed for missions in stable Earth orbits.

The Hostile Environment

The cislunar environment itself is unforgiving for both humans and machines.

• Radiation: The Moon has no thick atmosphere or global magnetic field to shield it from the harsh radiation of deep space. Astronauts and sensitive electronics are exposed to a constant bombardment of high-energy galactic cosmic rays and unpredictable bursts of radiation from solar flares and storms.
• Lunar Dust (Regolith): The entire lunar surface is covered in a fine, abrasive powder called regolith. Formed by billions of years of micrometeorite impacts, these tiny particles are sharp like broken glass and carry an electrostatic charge from the solar wind. During the Apollo missions, this dust clogged mechanisms, abraded space suits, interfered with electronics, and even caused respiratory irritation for the astronauts. Rocket exhaust during landings can blast this dust at high speeds for hundreds of miles, potentially damaging nearby equipment or historic sites.
• Extreme Temperatures: With no atmosphere to moderate temperatures, the lunar surface experiences brutal thermal swings. Temperatures can soar to 127°C (260°F) in direct sunlight and plummet to -173°C (-280°F) during the two-week-long lunar night. This extreme range can make materials brittle and drastically shorten the lifespan of equipment.

A Crowded Frontier

With more than 130 missions from over a dozen countries and numerous private companies planned for the next decade, cislunar space is quickly becoming a crowded domain. This surge in activity significantly increases the risk of radio frequency interference, satellite collisions, and the generation of orbital debris. A collision in a stable cislunar orbit, like an NRHO or around a Lagrange point, could create a cloud of debris that pollutes a strategically valuable region for thousands of years, jeopardizing all future operations there. This makes the development of robust space traffic management protocols and debris mitigation standards an urgent necessity.

These challenges are not independent; they are deeply interconnected. The communication delay drives the need for autonomy. The lack of PNT complicates traffic management. The difficulty of SDA makes debris tracking nearly impossible. Solving these problems requires more than just better technology for individual missions; it demands system-level solutions. It requires the development of a shared, interoperable infrastructure – PNT networks, communication relays, and SDA sensors – that all operators can use. This technical necessity is the primary driver behind the urgent policy and governance discussions aimed at building a cooperative and sustainable cislunar ecosystem.

Governance and the Future of Cislunar Development

As humanity pushes into this new frontier, the greatest challenge may not be technical but political: establishing the rules and norms that will govern activity, prevent conflict, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the cislunar environment.

Establishing the Rules of the Road

The foundational legal framework for all space activities is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It establishes bedrock principles, such as the non-appropriation of celestial bodies and the use of space for peaceful purposes. However, this Cold War-era treaty is silent on many of the complex issues facing the modern cislunar era, including the specifics of space resource extraction, the management of space traffic, and the mitigation of orbital debris.

To address these gaps, the United States has led the creation of the Artemis Accords. This is a non-legally-binding political agreement among participating nations that establishes a set of principles for responsible and cooperative space exploration. Key tenets of the Accords include transparency of operations, interoperability of systems, rendering emergency assistance, sharing scientific data, deconflicting activities to avoid harmful interference, and committing to the safe disposal of space debris. The Accords represent a proactive effort to establish a framework for governance based on shared values before conflicts can arise.

Building a Sustainable Ecosystem

The long-term vision for cislunar development hinges on the creation of foundational infrastructure, analogous to the roads, power grids, and navigation systems that underpin modern economies on Earth. A sustainable cislunar ecosystem requires a shared architecture of essential services that can be used by all operators, both public and private. Key components of this future infrastructure include:

• Power Generation and Distribution: Reliable power, from solar arrays or compact nuclear reactors, to support surface operations and orbiting platforms.
• Inter-orbital Transportation: A system of reusable space tugs and depots for moving cargo and propellant between Earth orbit, lunar orbit, and the Lagrange points.
• Communications and Navigation Networks: A “GPS for the Moon” and a network of communication relay satellites to provide continuous, high-bandwidth connectivity for all cislunar missions.

The ultimate goal is to foster an interoperable, resilient, and economically vibrant ecosystem that enables a permanent human presence and unlocks the full scientific and commercial potential of the domain.

The U.S. National Cislunar Strategy

Recognizing the strategic importance of this domain, the U.S. government has formalized its objectives in the National Cislunar Science & Technology Strategy. This document outlines a whole-of-government approach with four primary goals:

1. Support research and development to enable long-term growth.
2. Expand international science and technology cooperation.
3. Extend U.S. space situational awareness capabilities into cislunar space.
4. Implement scalable and interoperable communications and PNT capabilities.

This strategy signals a clear intent to lead in the development of the cislunar frontier, not through unilateral action, but through a combination of domestic investment, commercial partnerships, and international collaboration.

Ultimately, the current era of intense cislunar activity is more than a race for scientific discovery or economic gain; it is a race to set precedent. In a new domain with few established laws, customary practice – what nations actually do – often becomes the accepted norm over time. The first actors to operate consistently in a region have an outsized ability to establish these de facto rules of the road. The United States, through the Artemis Accords, is working to establish a precedent based on openness, cooperation, and peaceful use. Other nations may establish different practices through their own operations. The flurry of missions in this decade is therefore a race to create the facts on the ground – and in orbit – that will define the legal and operational landscape of cislunar space for generations to come. The ultimate winner may not be the first to land, but the first to establish its operational philosophy as the global standard.

Summary

Cislunar space, the vast and dynamically complex region between the Earth and the Moon, has decisively emerged as the new strategic frontier for humanity. Its character is defined not merely by its location but by the unique and challenging physics of the Earth-Moon gravitational system, which enables novel orbital pathways while demanding a new level of operational sophistication. This domain presents a confluence of unprecedented opportunities for scientific discovery, the creation of a robust cislunar economy based on local resources, and a proving ground for the technologies that will carry humans to Mars and beyond.

These opportunities have ignited a new, multipolar space race. This competition is fundamentally different from that of the 20th century. It is a contest waged by multiple international coalitions and supercharged by a vibrant commercial sector, all focused not on fleeting visits but on establishing a permanent and sustainable human and robotic presence. Two major architectural frameworks are taking shape: the U.S.-led Artemis program, built on a foundation of international and commercial partnership, and the China-Russia-led International Lunar Research Station.

The path forward is fraught with formidable challenges, from the hostile radiation and extreme temperatures of the lunar environment to the immense operational difficulties of navigating, communicating, and maintaining awareness across such a vast volume of space. Overcoming these hurdles will require the development of a shared, interoperable infrastructure for power, transportation, and data. The future of this frontier will be determined not only by technological innovation but by the governance frameworks and norms of behavior that are established in this critical, formative decade. The race for cislunar space is, in its essence, a race to define the future of humanity’s role in the solar system.