Cislunar Economy: The $100 Billion Opportunity Between Earth and the Moon

For six decades, the vast majority of human space activity has been confined to low Earth orbit (LEO) — the first 2,000 kilometers above the surface. But a new economic frontier is opening: cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon, extending roughly 384,000 km from our planet. Multiple analyses project the cislunar economy could reach $100 billion by 2040, driven by government exploration programs, commercial lunar services, and the infrastructure needed to support sustained activity beyond LEO.

What Is Cislunar Space?

Cislunar space encompasses everything between Earth orbit and the lunar surface, including several strategically important locations:

• Geostationary orbit (GEO), ~36,000 km: Already home to $30+ billion worth of communications and weather satellites
• Earth-Moon Lagrange points (L1, L2, L4, L5): Gravitationally stable positions where objects can maintain fixed positions relative to both Earth and the Moon. NASA's Lunar Gateway station will be placed near the L2 point
• Lunar orbit: Various orbits around the Moon useful for communications relays, navigation, and remote sensing
• Lunar surface: The destination for landing missions, resource extraction, and eventually permanent bases

The cislunar domain is not a distant aspiration — it's being built right now. Over the next five years, dozens of missions will operate in cislunar space, from NASA's Artemis missions to commercial lunar landers to communication relay satellites.

What's Driving the Cislunar Economy?

Government Exploration Programs

The primary near-term demand driver is government spending on lunar exploration. NASA's Artemis program alone represents tens of billions in contracts — SLS/Orion development, the Human Landing System (SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin), the Lunar Gateway, spacesuits, ground systems, and more. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program has awarded $2.6+ billion in contracts to companies like Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic, and Firefly for delivering payloads to the lunar surface.

NASA is not alone. ESA is contributing modules to the Lunar Gateway and developing the European Large Logistic Lander. JAXA (Japan) has its own lunar exploration program, including the SLIM lander that successfully touched down in 2024. China is executing an aggressive lunar program: Chang'e 6 returned samples from the Moon's far side in 2024, and crewed lunar landings are planned for 2030. India successfully landed Chandrayaan-3 in 2023 and is planning follow-on missions.

Commercial Lunar Services

A new industry of commercial lunar service providers is emerging:

• Intuitive Machines: Successfully landed on the Moon in February 2024 (the first commercial lunar landing), and has multiple follow-on CLPS missions under contract. Building a lunar communications and navigation infrastructure called "Khonshu"
• Astrobotic: Developing the Peregrine and Griffin landers for NASA CLPS payloads (NASA's VIPER rover, originally planned for Griffin delivery to the lunar south pole, was cancelled in July 2024)
• ispace: Japanese company developing the HAKUTO-R lunar lander series for commercial and government payload delivery
• Firefly Aerospace: Contracted for CLPS missions with their Blue Ghost lander

Lunar Resources

The Moon holds resources that could be economically valuable — not for return to Earth, but for use in space:

• Water ice: Permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles contain an estimated 600 million tonnes of water ice. Water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellant, life support, and radiation shielding. Producing propellant on the Moon rather than launching it from Earth could reduce the cost of deep space missions by 50-80%
• Regolith for construction: Lunar soil can be sintered or 3D-printed into building materials for habitats, landing pads, and radiation shielding, reducing the mass that must be launched from Earth
• Helium-3: The lunar surface contains deposits of Helium-3, a potential fuel for fusion reactors. While fusion power remains a future technology, Helium-3 could become extraordinarily valuable if fusion becomes practical

The Infrastructure Stack

Sustaining economic activity in cislunar space requires a layered infrastructure that doesn't yet exist — but is being built:

Transportation

Getting to the Moon is just the first step. The cislunar economy needs a reliable transportation network: Earth-to-orbit launch (increasingly commoditized by SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and others), orbital transfer vehicles (Impulse Space, Atomos, Momentus) for moving payloads from LEO to lunar transfer orbits, and lunar landers for the final descent. Reusable lunar landers and in-space refueling could dramatically reduce per-mission costs.

Communications and Navigation

Current lunar missions rely on NASA's Deep Space Network — a system designed for a handful of spacecraft, not a busy cislunar economy. New dedicated communication and navigation infrastructure is needed. Intuitive Machines' Khonshu network, Nokia's LTE/4G lunar network (contracted by NASA), and various proposals for lunar GPS-like navigation constellations are addressing this gap.

Power

The lunar surface experiences 14-day nights at most locations, making solar power alone insufficient for continuous operations. Nuclear fission surface power systems (NASA has contracted with Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, and IX for 40-kilowatt fission reactors) will be essential for permanent lunar bases. In cislunar orbit, solar power is abundant and reliable.

Space Domain Awareness

As more objects operate in cislunar space, tracking and monitoring becomes critical. The US Space Force is expanding its space domain awareness to cover cislunar space, and companies like ExoAnalytic Solutions and Slingshot Aerospace are developing cislunar surveillance capabilities.

Market Sizing: The $100 Billion Path

The cislunar economy can be broken into addressable market segments:

• Government exploration contracts: $30-40 billion through 2040 (Artemis, Gateway, CLPS, international programs)
• Lunar surface operations: $15-25 billion (resource prospecting, habitat construction, scientific instruments)
• Cislunar transportation: $10-15 billion (OTVs, lunar landers, refueling services)
• Communications and navigation: $5-10 billion (relay satellites, lunar networks)
• Lunar resource utilization: $5-10 billion (water extraction, propellant production — if ISRU proves viable at scale)
• National security: $10-15 billion (cislunar domain awareness, secure communications, positioning)

The total addressable market is heavily dependent on two factors: sustained government funding for lunar exploration (which is subject to political cycles) and successful demonstration of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) — proving that lunar water ice can be economically extracted and used. If ISRU works at scale, it unlocks a self-sustaining cislunar economy where lunar propellant fuels operations throughout the Earth-Moon system.

Risks and Challenges

• Funding sustainability: Artemis depends on sustained Congressional appropriations. Budget cuts or political shifts could delay or scale back the program
• Technical risk: Lunar landing remains difficult — multiple recent missions have failed or underperformed. ISRU is unproven at operational scale
• International competition: China's lunar program creates both competitive pressure (driving US investment) and geopolitical risk (potential conflicts over lunar resources and access)
• Legal framework: The Outer Space Treaty (1967) prohibits national sovereignty claims on the Moon, but the legal framework for resource extraction remains unsettled. The Artemis Accords provide a framework, but not all spacefaring nations have signed

Track the Cislunar Economy on SpaceNexus

SpaceNexus provides comprehensive coverage of the cislunar ecosystem through our Cislunar Economy module, including mission tracking, company profiles, contract data, and market analysis. Monitor the economic frontier between Earth and the Moon as it develops in real time.

Explore the Cislunar Economy on SpaceNexus