Open Lunar Foundation

Recognized under Tier 10 — Martian Law & Finance, Open Lunar Foundation is a San Francisco-based nonprofit, founded in 2018, that designs governance frameworks for a shared human presence on the Moon, with an explicit focus on resource management, data sharing, and technical coordination standards. The foundation has proposed Public Purpose Trusts as a legal structure for a prospective Lunar Consortium, intended to provide accountability and equitable access to lunar resources outside a traditional state-ownership model, and in March 2026 signed a memorandum of understanding with the Committee on Space Research to formalize research collaboration on lunar governance. Its Lunar Ledger initiative began publishing its first public dataset on lunar activity in mid-2026. Because no binding international framework yet governs resource extraction or property rights on the Moon or Mars, the institutional models Open Lunar is testing now — trusts, consortia, transparent data regimes — are likely templates for how Martian resource claims get structured once extraction becomes commercially viable.