UK SPF Report: Spectrum landscape for lunar communications
The UK Spectrum Policy Forum is pleased to announce a new independent study exploring the future of lunar communications. This study aims to uncover the role the UK could play as it adopts an approach to regulate future economic activity in and around the lunar environment.
Who writes the rules for the Moon?
Humanity is returning to the Moon, and this time the intention is to stay. Within the next decade, crewed landings, permanent surface infrastructure, relay and navigation constellations, and far-side observatories will turn the lunar radio environment from a handful of agency missions into a crowded, multi-operator economy. The rules that should govern that shift are only partly written.
A new study from the UK Spectrum Policy Forum argues that the next few years are the moment to write them, and that the UK is unusually well placed to lead.
What the study recommends
- Back the consensus WRC-27 (AI 1.15) SRS spectrum allocations as the necessary first step.
- Push for an enhanced Shielded Zone (SZM) EMI recommendation within the supporting resolutions.
- Establish a coordination procedure based on exclusion zones, coordination arcs and time-sharing under Article 22.25.
- Stand up a strengthened coordination forum with binding commercial membership to operationalise it.
- Beyond WRC-27, lead the SFCG and ITU-R follow-on work, backed by domestic licence conditions that exceed the international baseline.
The trigger is WRC-27 Agenda Item 1.15, the international community's formal opening to address lunar spectrum at the next World Radiocommunication Conference. The decisions taken there, and in the years immediately around it, will set the operating norms for the lunar environment for a generation, well before any binding treaty catches up. As the report puts it, the UK can either help write those norms now or inherit them later.
Why the UK and why now?
The UK has a strong supply-chain footprint, a leading position in ongoing lunar communications missions, such as Lunar Pathfinder and Moonlight, the deep-space ground station, and outsized influence in space standards and law. Crucially, it has genuine stakes on both sides of the central tension industry and science, without the structural conflict of interest that hampers the larger players. That makes it a credible honest broker.
On the engineering, the evidence is encouraging. The WP 7B sharing studies find the candidate WRC-27 allocations feasible across most band and service combinations, typically with margins of 20 to 70 dB. The real sensitivities sit in the Moon's Shielded Zone, where radio astronomy has reported exceedances of several tens of dB, and where high-power ground radars in parts of the UHF and C-band ranges add to the pressure.
The Ka-band carries the bulk of medium- and high-rate traffic by the early 2030s, while the X-band remains the irreplaceable fallback for command and safety-critical links, and S-band moves to a proximity-only role. Optical links will progressively relieve RF trunk demand, but will not absorb surface, EVA or contingency traffic.
The far-side paradox and the fix
The hardest problem lies on the far side of the Moon. Shielded by nearly 3,500 km of rock, it is the quietest radio site in the inner solar system and the only practical home for sensitive low-frequency astronomy. The dominant threat is not intentional transmission but unintended emissions from lawful, EMI-compliant spacecraft. The report's answer is a far-side framework and a coordination forum with binding commercial membership.
On regulation, the existing model of ITU allocations, voluntary SFCG coordination and informal domestic arrangements has worked because of the operator population was small and aligned. It does not scale. A durable fix could be a treaty-level WRC resolution defining the SFCG's role in coordination and authorisation, potentially via a new WRC-31 agenda item introduced at WRC-27, with the UK leading and bringing CEPT along.
For the UK delegation the path is clear: back the consensus allocations, press for stronger far-side protection, and lead the follow-on work. The UK need not do it alone, but it can lead through licence conditions that exceed the international baseline and the honest-broker position its mix of industrial and scientific equities makes credible. The window is narrow, but open now: the UK can help shape the norms of the lunar age, or live with the ones others write.
Tales Gaspar
Tales has a background in law and economics, with previous experience in the regulation of new technologies and infrastructure.
Sophie Greaves
Sophie Greaves is Associate Director for Digital Infrastructure at techUK, overseeing the Telecoms Programme, the Data Centres Programme, and the UK Spectrum Policy Forum.