Abstract
What does it actually mean for a permanent human settlement on the Moon to be sustainable, and how can we tell whether we are achieving it?
MoonDAO is currently designing the systems needed for a permanent lunar settlement. Existing lunar sustainability work provides important principles, technical approaches, governance recommendations, and emerging sustainability metrics, but these still need to be translated into practical criteria that can be assessed and progressively validated as a settlement moves from design to simulation and, eventually, lunar operations.
The Jordan Space Research Initiative, JSRI, proposes to develop the JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework v1, an open framework connecting sustainable development principles with measurable or observable criteria for long-term lunar settlement.
During this quarter, the project will synthesize relevant international frameworks and state-of-the-art research, define sustainability dimensions and indicators relevant to MoonDAO's settlement, identify how those indicators could be evaluated through modeling, technical testing, terrestrial analog missions, integrated Earth-based settlement simulations, or eventual lunar operations, and develop an initial Analog Validation Protocol.
The framework will also establish a pathway for future validation through JSRI's PETRA analog mission program in Jordan. Conducting PETRA-3 is not part of this quarter's scope. Instead, this project will create the research architecture needed for a future JSRI x MoonDAO field-validation campaign.
Problem
MoonDAO's roadmap places the organization in a settlement-design phase, followed by manufacturing, Earth-based simulation, and eventually integrated testing of settlement systems.
This creates an important question: how will MoonDAO determine whether the settlement it is designing is actually sustainable?
Lunar sustainability is already an active area of research and policy development, but there is no single agreed interpretation of what it requires.
Janssen et al. (2026), in Examining the Meaning of Sustainability on the Moon, found substantial differences in how people interested in lunar and space exploration understand sustainability. Environmental, economic, and social dimensions were all considered important, but respondents differed in how they prioritized operational, financial, environmental, and ethical considerations.
Examining the Meaning of Sustainability on the Moon
The Moon Village Association's Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activities, GEGSLA, developed the Recommended Framework and Key Elements for Peaceful and Sustainable Lunar Activities, covering issues including coordination, information sharing, safe operations, environmental protection, interoperability, governance, benefits for humanity, economic sustainability, and human interaction.
More recently, Cernev, de Zwart and Hessel (2026) proposed a Lunar Circular Economy and six metrics for lunar sustainability addressing material circularity, life-support energy performance, agricultural output, social cohesion, supply-chain resilience, and legal and governance frameworks.
Developing a Sustainable Human Lunar Presence Using Space Resources
The United Nations Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities provide another important foundation, connecting long-term sustainability with preserving the ability to conduct beneficial space activities into the future and supporting continued access to the benefits of outer space.
UN Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities
These efforts provide strong foundations, but MoonDAO still needs a practical way to connect this body of work to its own settlement-development process.
For example:
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Which sustainability considerations are most relevant to MoonDAO's settlement architecture?
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How can broad sustainability principles be translated into criteria that can actually be observed or measured?
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Which questions can be evaluated now through modeling or software simulation?
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Which require technical prototypes?
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Which human, social, resource-management, resilience, or governance questions can be investigated through terrestrial analog missions?
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Which require integrated Earth-based settlement simulations?
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Which cannot credibly be validated until lunar operations exist?
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How should evidence generated through these different environments feed back into settlement design?
Technical efficiency alone is insufficient. A habitat may achieve high material circularity while creating unsafe workloads. A settlement could reduce dependence on Earth while creating critical single points of failure. Efficient resource extraction could produce unacceptable environmental impacts. A technically functional settlement whose governance or resource-allocation systems repeatedly fail under constraint may also be unsustainable.
MoonDAO therefore needs a structured pathway from:
Sustainability Principle → Criterion → Indicator → Measurement → Validation → Evidence
Solution
This project will create the JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework v1.
The project will not develop another general declaration of sustainability principles. Instead, it will synthesize existing work and translate it into an applied assessment and validation structure relevant to MoonDAO's settlement-development process.
1. Lunar Sustainability Architecture
The project will review relevant work across sustainable development, lunar governance, engineering, resource utilization, environmental stewardship, human factors, resilience, and long-term human settlement.
The initial framework will examine five interconnected dimensions:
Resource Sustainability
Water, energy, food, materials, waste, circularity, in-situ resource utilization, logistics, and dependence on Earth resupply.
Human Sustainability
Health, safety, wellbeing, habitability, workload, accessibility, inclusion, crew cohesion, and the capacity for long-duration human life rather than short-term survival alone.
Environmental Stewardship
Contamination, surface disturbance, waste, responsible resource extraction, scientifically important environments, heritage, and impacts on future lunar users.
Social and Institutional Sustainability
Decision-making, accountability, participation, equitable resource allocation, conflict management, information sharing, institutional resilience, and relationships between lunar inhabitants and Earth-based stakeholders.
Settlement Resilience and Long-Term Viability
Redundancy, adaptability, emergency capacity, maintainability, interoperability, local capability, supply-chain resilience, knowledge retention, and critical dependencies.
These dimensions are provisional and will be tested against the literature rather than treated as predetermined conclusions.
2. Sustainability Criteria and Indicators
The framework will translate the identified dimensions into a structured assessment architecture:
Principle → Criterion → Indicator → Measurement Method → Validation Environment → Limitation
Illustrative examples include:
| Principle | Example Indicator | Potential Validation |
| :---- | :---- | :---- |
| Resource stewardship | Water use per crew member per operational day | Analog mission / simulation |
| Circularity | Percentage of selected material streams recovered or reused | Technical testing / analog mission |
| Human sustainability | Workload and fatigue under resource-constrained operations | Analog mission |
| Settlement resilience | Time required to restore a simulated critical capability | Simulation / analog mission |
| Resource allocation | Outcomes and consistency of allocation decisions during scarcity | Analog mission |
| Earth independence | Percentage of critical functions dependent on Earth resupply | Modeling / technical testing |
| Environmental stewardship | Disturbance or contamination associated with an activity | Simulation / technical testing / lunar validation |
| Institutional sustainability | Decision latency and protocol effectiveness during operational scenarios | Analog mission |
Not every sustainability issue can or should be reduced to one numerical score. The framework will therefore distinguish quantitative metrics, qualitative indicators, thresholds, structured observations, and areas where meaningful measurement is not yet possible.
3. Validation Classification
A central contribution of the framework will be identifying where and how each sustainability criterion can credibly be evaluated.
Indicators will be classified according to one or more validation environments:
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Desktop assessment or modeling
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Software simulation
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Terrestrial technical testing
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Terrestrial analog mission
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Integrated Earth-based settlement simulation
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Lunar operational validation
Each indicator will also include limitations describing what evidence from that environment can and cannot demonstrate.
4. Analog Validation Protocol
JSRI will develop an initial protocol for evaluating the subset of sustainability indicators suitable for terrestrial analog missions.
The protocol will include 3 to 5 prototype operational scenarios potentially addressing:
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constrained water or energy allocation;
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resource conservation versus mission productivity;
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circular use of selected mission resources;
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crew and Mission Control decision-making;
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temporary loss of a critical capability;
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sustainability trade-offs under operational pressure.
Each scenario will specify:
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the sustainability question being investigated;
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relevant indicator or indicators;
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observations or data required;
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evaluation approach;
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limitations on interpretation.
5. Future PETRA Validation Pathway
JSRI operates PETRA, the Psychological, Environmental, and Technological Research Analog, its flagship analog research program in Jordan's Wadi Rum desert.
PETRA is designed to connect space exploration with sustainability, scientific research, education, community engagement, and capacity-building in an emerging space country.
PETRA-1, conducted in 2024, established JSRI's analog mission capability in Jordan. PETRA-2 followed in 2025 as part of the World's Biggest Analog and featured an all-Arab female analog crew representing Jordan and Palestine. The program combines analog research with sustainability, inclusion, education, and regional capacity-building.
This project will develop a roadmap for a future PETRA-3 Lunar Sustainability Validation Mission, through which selected human, resource, institutional, circularity, and resilience indicators developed through the framework could be field-tested.
PETRA-3 itself is outside the funded scope of this proposal.
A future JSRI x MoonDAO phase could fund physical implementation, including analog-site rental, mission infrastructure, logistics, research equipment, consumables, field operations, and analysis.
Novelty & Prior Art
What already exists?
GEGSLA Recommended Framework and Key Elements for Peaceful and Sustainable Lunar Activities
The Moon Village Association's GEGSLA framework provides recommendations for safe and sustainable lunar activities through norm-setting, coordination, and management.
Project Lead Sahba El-Shawa previously served as Implementation Support Officer for GEGSLA and is a co-author of the 2023 International Astronautical Congress paper The Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activities: Recommended Framework and Key Elements for Peaceful and Sustainable Lunar Activities.
United Nations Long-term Sustainability Guidelines
The UN Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities establish internationally agreed principles for preserving the ability to conduct beneficial space activities into the future.
UN Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities
Research on the meaning of lunar sustainability
Janssen et al. (2026), Examining the Meaning of Sustainability on the Moon, demonstrate that lunar sustainability is interpreted differently across stakeholder communities and highlight the importance of balancing environmental, social, economic, operational, and ethical perspectives.
Examining the Meaning of Sustainability on the Moon
Lunar Circular Economy and sustainability metrics
Cernev, de Zwart and Hessel (2026), Developing a Sustainable Human Lunar Presence Using Space Resources, propose a Lunar Circular Economy and six sustainability metrics spanning material circularity, energy performance, agricultural productivity, social cohesion, supply-chain resilience, and governance and legal frameworks.
Developing a Sustainable Human Lunar Presence Using Space Resources
JSRI research on space and sustainable development
JSRI's work has addressed the relationship between lunar exploration, sustainable development, emerging space countries, and analog research since its creation.
Relevant prior work includes JSRI publications on Space2030, analog research, lunar exploration, and the PETRA program.
JSRI Publication on Societal Benefits of Lunar Exploration
Project Lead Sahba El-Shawa's related work includes Pathways for the Implementation of the UN Space2030 Agenda: A Comprehensive View of the Impact of Space on Social and Environmental Sustainability.
Space2030 and Social and Environmental Sustainability
Doctoral research in space, sustainability, and framework development
Project Lead Sahba El-Shawa holds a PhD in Sustainable Development and Climate Change from IUSS Pavia. Her doctoral research examined the intersections of space technologies, artificial intelligence, Earth Observation, sustainable development, and epistemic justice.
The dissertation combined conceptual and applied research, including the development of analytical frameworks for understanding AI as an epistemic technology, the role of knowledge and perspective in the use of satellite data, and the relationship between technological systems and sustainable-development outcomes. It also applied Earth Observation and AI methods to environmental monitoring and examined how emerging space technologies can be evaluated not only through technical performance, but through their social, environmental, and knowledge impacts.
This experience is directly relevant to the proposed Lunar Sustainability Framework because the project similarly requires synthesizing multiple bodies of literature, defining conceptual dimensions, translating broad principles into structured criteria, and connecting those criteria to measurable or testable forms of evidence.
The doctoral thesis is publicly available through the IUSS Pavia institutional repository:
PhD Thesis: Sustainable Development, Space Technologies, AI, and Epistemic Justice
MoonDAO settlement work
MoonDAO is already developing projects related to lunar settlement design, simulation, analog participation, and long-term settlement architecture. The current MoonDAO roadmap progresses from settlement design toward Earth-based manufacturing and simulation.
What is new about this project?
The project does not claim to create the first lunar sustainability framework or the first lunar sustainability metrics.
Its contribution is an applied assessment and validation layer for MoonDAO.
The project will connect:
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existing sustainability principles and state-of-the-art research;
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sustainable development thinking;
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MoonDAO's settlement-development process;
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settlement-level criteria and indicators;
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measurement approaches;
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explicit validation environments;
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limitations of each validation environment;
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terrestrial analog-testing protocols;
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a pathway for iterative validation through JSRI's PETRA program.
The core methodological contribution is the validation architecture.
Rather than asking only, "What should a sustainable lunar settlement look like?", the project asks:
What evidence would allow us to determine whether a settlement design is meeting those sustainability goals, and at what stage can that evidence realistically be generated?
Why not just use the existing work?
Existing frameworks and research provide principles, recommendations, technical concepts, emerging metrics, and research agendas.
MoonDAO still needs an applied method for determining:
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which sustainability criteria are relevant to its settlement;
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how those criteria should be measured or observed;
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which development stage can test them;
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which testing environment is appropriate;
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what evidence would support or challenge a sustainability claim;
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where current evidence remains insufficient;
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how future simulations and analog missions can be designed around these questions.
This project therefore uses and operationalizes existing work rather than competing with it.
Honesty check
This project is substantially an exercise in research synthesis, translation, operationalization, and validation design.
It does not claim that sustainable development, lunar sustainability, sustainability metrics, circular economies, or analog testing are new concepts.
Its added value is integrating these bodies of work into an open assessment structure tailored to MoonDAO's settlement-development process and establishing an explicit pathway from sustainability principles to testable evidence.
Lunar Bridge
MoonDAO is currently designing a lunar settlement and intends to progress toward manufacturing and Earth-based simulation. The JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework will allow sustainability requirements to be considered before settlement designs become increasingly fixed in physical and operational systems. It will identify which sustainability claims can be assessed through modeling, technical testing, terrestrial analog missions, integrated Earth simulations, and eventual lunar operations. Future validation through JSRI's PETRA program can provide an independent terrestrial research environment for testing selected human, resource, governance, circularity, and resilience components of MoonDAO's settlement concept.
Community Standing
This would be JSRI's first funded MoonDAO project, and I am still a relatively new contributor to the MoonDAO community.
My existing involvement has included supporting MoonDAO's Frank White Overview Effect campaign, which seeks to expand engagement around the Overview Effect and Frank White's work.
This is also connected to my own research background. My doctoral research included work on the Overview Effect and how experiences of Earth from space, including simulated experiences through virtual reality, may influence perspectives related to sustainability and planetary awareness.
I am proposing this project as a way to become more actively involved in MoonDAO's research and settlement work while establishing a meaningful collaboration between MoonDAO and JSRI.
There is substantial alignment between the two communities. JSRI grew from work exploring how an emerging space country could contribute to lunar exploration while creating sustainable-development benefits on Earth. Today, JSRI conducts research and analog missions built around those principles.
I hope this project can establish a longer-term bridge between MoonDAO and JSRI, beginning with collaborative sustainability research and potentially expanding into future PETRA analog validation as MoonDAO moves from settlement design toward simulation and testing.
Benefits
A practical sustainability tool for MoonDAO
MoonDAO receives an open framework for evaluating sustainability questions throughout settlement development.
A bridge between sustainability principles and evidence
The project translates broad principles into criteria, indicators, measurement approaches, and validation environments.
Support for MoonDAO's simulation roadmap
The validation matrix will identify questions suitable for modeling, software simulation, technical prototypes, analog missions, integrated Earth testing, and eventual lunar operations.
Early identification of sustainability trade-offs
The framework can expose cases where improving one system creates problems elsewhere, such as increasing resource efficiency while reducing resilience or human wellbeing.
A future analog-testing pathway
JSRI's PETRA program provides a potential independent environment for field-testing selected sustainability indicators in a future project.
Connection to the Sustainable Development Goals
JSRI's work has been grounded in the relationship between space activities and the Sustainable Development Goals since its creation. Project Lead Sahba El-Shawa is also a United Nations Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals, selected by the UN Youth Office.
UN Young Leaders for the SDGs: Sahba El-Shawa
This brings direct sustainable-development expertise into MoonDAO's settlement work while exploring how lessons developed for terrestrial sustainable development can be critically adapted, rather than simply copied, for human settlement beyond Earth.
Global participation in lunar research and development
The project creates a pathway for an emerging-space-country research organization to contribute directly to the design and validation of future lunar settlement concepts.
Open research infrastructure
All core outputs will be openly licensed and reusable by MoonDAO members, researchers, analog programs, and other lunar-development efforts.
Risks
Risk: The scope becomes too broad
Lunar sustainability spans engineering, environmental science, human factors, governance, economics, and other disciplines.
Mitigation: This quarter will prioritize a defined framework architecture and a limited set of indicators. Questions requiring substantial additional work will be identified as future research rather than expanded indefinitely.
Risk: Duplication of existing sustainability work
Important frameworks and emerging lunar sustainability metrics already exist.
Mitigation: The prior-art matrix is a formal project deliverable. Existing principles and metrics will be mapped and incorporated where appropriate rather than unnecessarily recreated.
Risk: False precision
Not every human, environmental, social, or institutional sustainability issue can be meaningfully represented by one numerical metric.
Mitigation: The framework will explicitly distinguish quantitative metrics, qualitative indicators, threshold criteria, structured observations, and unresolved measurement questions.
Risk: Overclaiming terrestrial analog validity
Earth analog environments cannot reproduce lunar gravity, radiation, vacuum, regolith behavior, or many other lunar conditions.
Mitigation: Every candidate indicator will include a validation classification and limitations statement. Analog missions will only be proposed where the relevant question can credibly be investigated in an Earth-based environment.
Risk: Dependence on PETRA-3
PETRA-3 will occur outside this project's funded timeline.
Mitigation: No Key Result depends on conducting PETRA-3. This quarter produces the framework, validation methodology, and future field-validation roadmap only.
Risk: Limited disciplinary perspective
No single researcher can represent every dimension of lunar sustainability.
Mitigation: The framework will undergo structured review from at least three reviewers, including MoonDAO participation. Areas of disagreement and uncertainty will be documented rather than presented as settled conclusions.
Objectives
Objective #1: Develop and publish an open JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework v1 that translates existing sustainable-development and lunar-sustainability work into settlement-level criteria, indicators, measurement approaches, and validation pathways relevant to MoonDAO's future lunar settlement.
Key Results for Objective #1:
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KR1: Publish a structured prior-art matrix covering at least 15 relevant frameworks, peer-reviewed papers, agency resources, and MoonDAO projects, identifying their relevance to lunar settlement sustainability.
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KR2: Publish the JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework v1 with at least 5 sustainability dimensions and 20 candidate criteria or indicators, each mapped to a proposed measurement approach, validation environment, and known limitation.
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KR3: Publish an Analog Validation Protocol identifying the framework indicators that can credibly be investigated through terrestrial analog missions and develop 3 to 5 prototype validation scenarios.
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KR4: Publish a PETRA Lunar Sustainability Validation Roadmap identifying candidate research questions, data requirements, infrastructure needs, and methodological limitations for a future PETRA-3 field campaign.
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KR5: Obtain structured feedback from at least 3 reviewers, including at least one MoonDAO contributor, and publish a review log documenting major feedback and resulting revisions.
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KR6: Present the completed framework and recommended next-stage validation pathway to the MoonDAO community at a Town Hall by Day 90.
Member(s) responsible for OKR and their role:
- Dr. Sahba El-Shawa, Project Lead and Lead Researcher: Responsible for research synthesis, framework methodology, indicator development, validation architecture, analog-validation design, integration of reviewer feedback, MoonDAO project reporting, and final deliverables.
Non-goals this quarter:
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Conducting PETRA-3.
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Renting or operating an analog habitat or mission site.
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Building physical lunar-settlement or flight hardware.
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Designing MoonDAO's complete lunar settlement.
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Creating an international certification standard.
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Replacing existing UN, GEGSLA, agency, or academic sustainability frameworks.
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Claiming terrestrial analog conditions reproduce the lunar environment.
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Collecting PETRA human-participant research data.
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Establishing a company or other legal entity.
Team (Table A)
| Project Lead | @sahbaelshawa |
| :---- | :---- |
| Initial Team | Dr. Sahba El-Shawa, Project Lead and Lead Researcher: Responsible for framework synthesis, methodology, indicator and validation architecture, Analog Validation Protocol, PETRA validation roadmap, project reporting, and final deliverables. Additional reviewers will provide structured feedback but are not required for core project execution. |
| Same-type prior work links | Lunar sustainability framework work: GEGSLA Recommended Framework and IAC 2023 GEGSLA paper. Space and sustainable-development research: JSRI Publications and Space2030 and Social and Environmental Sustainability. Framework development and interdisciplinary sustainability research: PhD in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, including development of conceptual and analytical frameworks connecting space technologies, AI, Earth Observation, sustainability, and epistemic justice. Published doctoral thesis. Analog research and mission design: JSRI PETRA Analog Missions. SDG expertise: UN Young Leaders for the SDGs profile. |
| Multi-sig signers* | TBD in coordination with the MoonDAO Senate. Project Lead Sahba El-Shawa will participate as one signer, with additional trusted MoonDAO community signers identified through the proposal review and approval process. |
Intellectual Property
- Open: All funded project outputs will be released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, CC BY 4.0.
This includes:
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JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework v1
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prior-art matrix
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indicator and validation matrix
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Analog Validation Protocol
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prototype analog scenarios
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PETRA validation roadmap
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review log
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final project report
Future PETRA mission data will be governed separately because it may involve human-participant research, personal data, partner information, or ethical-review requirements. No PETRA-3 participant data will be collected under this grant.
Timeline (Table B)
| Days after Proposal Passes | Description |
| :---- | :---- |
| 0 | Proposal passes. Project setup and MoonDAO reporting process established. |
| 7 | Publish research methodology, framework scope, initial sustainability dimensions, prior-art structure, and reviewer plan. |
| 30 | Complete prior-art matrix and publish draft framework architecture, including initial sustainability criteria and candidate indicators. |
| 60 | Complete draft Lunar Sustainability Framework. Assign validation classifications and limitations. Circulate draft Analog Validation Protocol and prototype scenarios for review. |
| 90 | Publish JSRI x MoonDAO Lunar Sustainability Framework v1, prior-art matrix, Analog Validation Protocol, prototype scenarios, PETRA validation roadmap, review log, and final report. Present results at MoonDAO Town Hall and return unused funds. |
Deadline for the project: End of the funded quarter.
PETRA-3 field validation is outside this project's scope and may form a future JSRI x MoonDAO project in 2027.
Budget (Table C)
| Description | Class (A–E) | Amount (USD) | Justification |
| :---- | :---- | :---- | :---- |
| Lead research and framework development | A = labor | $1,250 | 25 hours × $50/hour for literature synthesis, framework architecture, criteria and indicator development, validation classification, and core authorship. Supports KR1 and KR2. |
| Analog Validation Protocol and PETRA validation roadmap | A = labor | $500 | 10 hours × $50/hour for analog-testability assessment, scenario development, validation methodology, and future PETRA research design. Supports KR3 and KR4. |
| Review integration, open documentation, and final dissemination | A = labor | $375 | 7.5 hours × $50/hour for reviewer coordination, revision tracking, reference verification, final open documentation, project reporting, and Town Hall preparation. Supports KR5 and KR6. |
| Total | | $2,125 | All funding is directly tied to inspectable quarterly research outputs. |
No funds from this proposal will be used for general organizational overhead, ordinary computer equipment, legal-entity formation, or PETRA-3 field operations.
If the framework proceeds to field validation, a future proposal may separately seek funding for PETRA-3 infrastructure and implementation, including analog-site or habitat rental, mission logistics, research equipment, instrumentation, consumables, and field operations.
Transactions (Table D)
| Transaction Type | Amount | Token Type | Receiving Address |
| :---- | :---- | :---- | :---- |
| Send | $2,125 equivalent | USDC or MoonDAO-required stablecoin, to confirm | Project multi-sig, TBD following proposal approval |
Pre-submit checklist
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Ask ≤ posted quarterly max ($2,125)
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All required sections completed; italicized instructions removed
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Key Results are non-empty and testable
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Budget justified and within allowed categories
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Team, timeline, and IP disclosure filled in
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Only one primary proposal from this Lead this quarter
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Supporting docs attached if the plan depends on partners — N/A; project completion does not depend on an external partner
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Scope limited to this quarter's inspectable deliverables