Moon Market Economy Roadmap

Since 2016, 83 missions have been contracted to send spacecraft, infrastructure, and crew to the Moon, valued at $50 billion. With 8 space agencies and 26 commercial companies involved, and given the growing number of announcements and funding, suffice it to say, the race to the Moon is back.

While there have been hundreds of proposed missions made since the Apollo era, and even the failed Google Lunar XPRIZE, the Moon market has barely had any real traction over the past 50 years. Technology development has been slow, commercial incentives have been few, and funding has been too much of a challenge.

So, what’s changed? And will it last?

NSR’s latest Moon Markets Analysis report forecasts 140 Moon missions, generating over $42 billion in cumulative revenues, will be conducted between 2020-2030. Research found that 105 missions have been announced since 2012, but the vast majority since 2019. As with almost all satellite & space markets, it began with government interest and support.

Government-led

While NASA has flip-flopped between the Moon and Mars as its target destination, ESA has been considering its “Moon village” for years, and China’s Chang’e missions have continued orbiting & landing on the Moon’s surface. What has really moved the needle has been NASA’s commercialization of LEO, first announced in 2019, and the agency’s pivot to the Moon, as the next logical step for human space exploration.

As such, NASA has attributed over $21 billion, currently, toward the Human Landing System and Artemis, programs aimed at returning humans to the Moon this decade. In the west, the Canadian, European, and Japanese space agencies are strongly investing and collaborating in the Lunar Gateway and other projects of the same purpose as NASA. In the east, China, Russia, and others have been working toward their own space stations and lunar missions. This competition stands to both benefit and harm the development of the lunar economy.



Contrary to the traditional approach, where governments completely took on the development of crewed missions and infrastructure, much of the activity has been outsourced to the commercial sector. Confidence in commercial players has risen greatly in recent years, given the sector’s activities in launching cargo, and now crew, to the International Space Station. Programs such as NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), Canada’s LEAP and Europe’s Esprit programs are incentivizing the commercial community to serve government interests, via large funding for the provision of transportation, scientific payloads, and infrastructure for long-term lunar operations.



Given the incredibly high cost of development, Crewed missions will contribute most of the government-driven revenues, at 52%. Infrastructure & Robotics, needed for sustaining human operations on the Moon, are expected to contribute 33% over the decade. While activity in science, remote sensing, and other traditional verticals is expected to continue and are very important, these three priority verticals are the major revenue driver, and a contributing factor in the move beyond a flag-planting exercise toward a real and sustainable economy.

Commercially-sustained

The role of the commercial sector, initially, will be in the provision of services to government customers. This trend is not surprising, and has been the development model across Earth observation, satellite manufacturing & launch, and other space markets. However, just as with these markets, commercial players are seeking to move beyond government customers. There comes a point when an anchor, even if attached to a customer, is limiting, and such is the case in relying on either unchanging and continuing government interest & support, or in limiting an industry’s activities to only one customer type.

This transition will be slow. Technology is difficult and expensive to develop, but more importantly, proving and enabling the commercialization of lunar operations will be exceedingly challenging. Who are the customers? What is the market need? How much will it cost? These questions are crucial, with the middle likely proving the most difficult to answer. What kind of commercial services can one expect from hardware sent to the Moon and possibly back again?



While the scale is smaller, the commercial sector represents a mirror to government prioritization. Transportation, Communications, and Remote Sensing will generate the majority of commercially served revenues over the decade, at 47%, with the rest fairly distributed over all other applications. Initially, commercial missions will focus on supporting government programs, but as technology and cost-efficiencies improve, two market developments are expected. Primarily, the commercial sector will further prove its viability not just in supporting, but enabling government missions, which NSR expects will contribute most via future Crewed and Infrastructure missions in the latter half of the decade. Secondly, these same improvements will enable resource utilization, and the shift to a service-based economy, via communications, remote sensing, and similar.

Challenges

While funding and support for lunar missions is higher than any other time since Apollo, there is no guarantee that this market will develop. Governments are the main driver, the main customer, and interest in the Moon has waxed and waned before. Should a changing administration reallocate funding elsewhere, or downsize/remove a program entirely, momentum and technological development for lunar activity could hit a wall, or never progress beyond pride missions, thus never becoming a sustainable economy.

Additionally, crew and infrastructure missions are some of the most dangerous and challenging, and the market’s primary focus here will delay and possibly overshadow other vertical development. Finally, politics and regulation, the latter most notably around the commercial use of outer space & its resources, could create roadblocks.

Bottom Line

The race to the Moon is back, driven by governments seeking to send crews and infrastructure for long-term operations beyond the International Space Station. Thanks to the increasing commercialization of LEO, confidence in commercial sector capabilities has grown, allowing much stronger collaboration, partnership, and support between the public and private sectors.

While most of the opportunity will focus on expensive, keystone missions, a true and sustainable lunar economy will only develop via commercially-enabled and driven provision of hardware and services to, from, and on the Moon.