(Roughly) Daily

As Oliver Hawkins and Peggy Hollinger report, an analysis of commercial radio spectrum filings shows a growing number of players– government agencies, but increasingly private companies– bettting on the emergence of a lunar economy…

Private companies are staking claims to radio spectrum on the Moon with the aim of exploiting an emerging lunar economy, Financial Times research has found.

More than 50 applications have been filed with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010 to use spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enable all wireless technology, on or from the Moon.

Last year the number of commercial filings to the global co-ordinating body for lunar spectrum outstripped those from space agencies and governments for the first time, according to FT research. The filings cover satellite systems as well as missions to land on the lunar surface.

“We will look back and see this as an important inflection point,” said Katherine Gizinski, chief executive of spectrum consultancy River Advisers, which has filed for lunar spectrum for three satellite systems on behalf of other companies since 2021.

Although total registrations were lower in 2024 than the previous year, the increased proportion of commercial filings reflects a race to build the infrastructure that will enable the “cislunar economy”, the area between the Earth and Moon…

More on the players and the game: “The race to claim the Moon’s airwaves” (gift article), from @financialtimes.com. See also:

* William Butler Yeats, “The Cat and the Moon”

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As we linger over the lunar, we might recall that it was on this date in 1971 that NASA accomplished the third lunar EVA: Commander Alan B. Shepard and Lunar Module pilot Edgar D. Mitchell became the fifth and sixth men to walk on the Moon (in the lunar highlands near the crater Fra Mauro) as part of the Apollo 14 mission.

During this four-hour “activity,” they deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP)– scientific experiments that were left on the lunar surface and other scientific and sample collection apparatus. B efore lifting off on the next day, the astronauts went on another moonwalk almost to the rim of nearby Cone crater, collecting 42.9 kg of samples along the traverse. At the end of this 3.45 km walk, Shepard used a contingency sampler with a Wilson 6-iron connected to the end to hit two golf balls.