Cislunar Exploration: Challenges and Opportunities – Online Short Course (Starts 3 Mar 2025) 3 March - 17 March 2025 Online

OVERVIEW
The return to the Moon has begun. And it is no longer the Apollo Era, characterized by short missions to the Moon led by NASA astronauts. Current US, international, and commercial crewed and uncrewed mission plans will be challenged by multiple hurdles that were not faced before, including regulatory, habitat, mining, and navigation and positioning. This course aims to present a few key challenges related to the return to the Moon and beyond that are often sidelined. For example, there are many efforts on navigation, tracking and custody maintenance for objects in cislunar space, but we do not yet have a common reference frame to use. In this course, we will explore possible impacts from establishing sustained presence on the Moon, such as law enforcement, positioning, and space weather. Topics to be discussed:

• Cislunar Challenges Overview: this introductory class aims to present the challenges of cislunar space, from launch to sustained presence and all of their implications. The goal is to highlight challenges that are often neglected, but are yet important, in addition to tackling well-known difficulties, such as navigation.
• Mapping the Moon for Improved Lunar Navigation: A Geodesy and Geophysics Perspective: This section will examine the Moon's exploration through the lens of geodesy and geophysics, with a particular emphasis on the historical development of the infrastructure that enables lunar navigation. We will discuss the role of lunar laser reflection, satellite altimetry, and satellite gravimetry missions in mapping the Moon's position, orientation, topography, and gravity, and how these measurements are influenced by the properties of the lunar interior. We will also explore the active geophysical and surface processes that continue to change the Moon’s surface and their implications for future lunar explorers.
• Space Weather: introduction to Space Weather, focusing on Space Weather Phenomena and the impacts associated with these phenomena.
• Space Law: this deep-dive class will highlight and explain the international laws governing cislunar activities - which, while broad in nature, and nevertheless binding on all national activities, including private activities. This two-hour lecture will focus on the current international and national legal regime governing cislunar activities, as found in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and subsequent international treaties. Rather than going over, article by article, these binding legal instruments, this lecture will discuss what behavior is prohibited, prohibited unless permitted by a national license, permissory, or mandatory—as well as what activity is not currently regulated, or instances where the law is vague and unclear. These rules govern everything from peaceful civil and scientific activities to security aspects of cislunar activities.