The Moon is coming into fashion after 50 years of calm. But this time it is not a race between two: it is a commercial race in which old and new space powers, as well as a multitude of private companies, participate.
The lunar “jam.” The interest is so sudden that in the last two years there have been 12 attempted lunar missions. This “blitz” of moon landings, driven by public-private programs such as NASA’s CLPS, has proven to be a quick, cheap, but also a little chaotic to reach the Moon.
Still, worrying about “traffic jams” on the Moon sounds absurd. Cislunar space (the region between the geostationary orbit of the Earth and the Moon) is gigantic: 2,000 times larger than that of Earth’s orbit.
If there is so much room, where is the problem? The problem is that everyone wants the same place. In the same way that on Earth all cars use the roads, on the Moon missions tend to cluster in a very select set of stable orbits.
The immensity of cislunar space is, therefore, deceptive, explain professors of International Affairs and Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in an article for The Conversation.
To make matters worse. Most government sensors that track satellites in Earth orbit are not designed to detect and monitor objects this far away. The Moon’s own glare makes the task difficult.
This uncertainty has a direct consequence: it forces operators to be excessively cautious. When in doubt about a possible collision, agencies prefer to waste fuel and carry out an evasion maneuver, which interrupts scientific missions and shortens the useful life of the ships.
50 satellites are enough for chaos. According to research published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rocketsonly 50 satellites in lunar orbit are enough for each of them to have to maneuver an average of four times a year in order to avoid a possible collision.
50 satellites may seem like a lot, but at the current rate of launches, we could reach that number in less than a decade. And it’s not theory. It’s already happening. The Indian orbiter Chandrayaan-2 had to maneuver three times between 2019 and 2023 to avoid dangerous approaches (one of them with NASA’s LRO probe). And this occurred when there were only six operational spacecraft orbiting the Moon.
The UN wants to bring order. This is where international diplomacy comes in. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the main global forum for space law, has taken action on the matter.
In early 2025, COPUOS formally established a new working group: the Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation (ATLAC). The goal of this team is precisely to create a draft of space “traffic rules.” They have until 2027 to study recommendations and a possible international consultation mechanism.
Image | POT
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