Moon Village Association (MVA) Global Collaboration Framework for Lunar Missions

The Moon Village Association (MVA) is a global organization that aims to foster collaboration between nations, space agencies, industry and the public, in order to facilitate the creation of a Lunar Economy. Despite its name, the purpose of the organization is not to create a base on the Moon. The "Moon Village" is the collection of people and organizations here on Earth that will collectively set Lunar activities in motion.

The MVA's pilot mission - sending a Camera to the Lunar Surface to capture images of the earth and recreate the “Overview Effect” - aims to test in action how combining the capabilities of the MVA’s individual and institutional members can lower the entry barrier to the Lunar economy.

The technical objective of the mission is to capture and live-stream a video of the Earth for 1 Lunar Day. The data will be broadcasted and utilized to engage the scientific community and general public to maximize mission returns for this and future missions.

The challenge:

Compared to Earth orbit missions, lunar missions are less prevalent, more technically complex with extra risks and completely different investment scales and timelines. This means that non-institutional space players have fewer opportunities to participate in lunar science and the creation of the Lunar Economy. There is also a lot of untapped capacity in the non-space world: Drawing a parallel to GIS, Sat Comms, Navigation etc., and progress achieved due to publicly accessible space-asset data in non-space industries, the potential benefit of opening up Lunar exploration to more players seems self-evident. The challenge is, however, enabling this global potential.

 Our talk will address this issue and will be structured to cover the following points:

Mission description: We will describe our goals, why we decided to put a camera on the Moon, what are the technical requirements and why we selected the “Overview Effect” as our main objective.

MVA Collaboration framework outline: This will address how we combine our varied strengths within the MVA to create a mission and how we want to see our members putting missions together in the future, on their own initiative. 

The MVA role, the role of volunteers and institutional partners: We will present how the building blocks fit together, what each side offers and receives through this collaboration.

Lessons learned from the pre-phase A and phase A of the mission: We will discuss technical, financial, managerial, outreach and public engagement aspects, method-of-working issues, what were the biggest challenges to milestone success and how they were overcome.

Obstacles and challenges moving forward: We will address our cost and schedule elements, paths to funding and risk management, and also ethics and responsible culture setting.

How can someone get involved: As we are looking to engage both the scientific community and the public, we will be presenting information on where one can stay updated with our work, and what are the options for participation, either as an individual, an institution or a company.

The talk will be designed and delivered from First Payload Project team members. The team is made up of both space and non-space industry professionals, all volunteers distributed across multiple time zones, without common working hours and a high chance of most members never meeting in person. The team is supported by the MVA’s institutional members (agencies, educational institutions and industry) in the form of in-kind contributions: an exchange of services, knowledge or materials given by the institutional member due to synergies between the mission objectives and the member’s own scientific or business objectives.

This presentation will not focus on technical or scientific objectives or results of the 1st MVA Payload Project but on the process that is being created as a rubric for future lunar projects. From planning to set-up and further, and with the understanding that this is an ongoing process, this talk will present a guide of sorts or in the very least a detailed example of the processes necessary for private-sector lunar missions that deviate from the normal client-supplier models of institutional and Earth orbit missions.