The operating picture

The map.

Cislunar space, annotated: five regimes, the volume they add up to, and where the infrastructure Constanellis is building sits inside it. Every labeled object carries a label saying how far along it is. Nothing on this map has flown.

This is a schematic, not a photograph, and not to scale. Distances are compressed so the whole volume fits one frame. Every figure quoted beside an object is a published constant.

The schematic holds a fixed working width here and pans sideways. Every object on it is written out below.

Readout

03CISLUNAR

Cislunar space

Earth orbit out past the Moon: roughly a thousand times the operating volume of today's space economy.

Earth to Moon mean distance384,400 km

ScaleRoughly a thousand times the operating volume of today's space economy

Twelve labeled objects.

Select one to read it on the map. Every object below is also written out in full further down the page, so the argument survives with scripting turned off.

The regimes

Physical geometry. Reference tags, not claims.

The watch

What NEXUS is being built to see.

The network

Where the EVERLIGHT nodes sit in the architecture.

The campaign

Where PROSPECTOR flies. Nothing has flown.

Constants

The numbers this map is built on.

Six figures carry the whole schematic. None of them is ours, none is derived here, and none is an estimate we made. They are published constants, quoted so a reader can check the drawing against the physics.

Two kinds of label

Physical regimes carry a reference tag: geometry is not a claim. Everything Constanellis is building carries a service maturity label, the same four states used on every program page, read from the same file those pages read.

Compressed distances

The Earth to Moon separation is drawn far shorter than its true proportion so the near-Earth regimes stay readable. The scale break to the right of geostationary orbit marks where the compression starts.

Nothing has flown

Every Constanellis object here is architecture, or hardware on the ground. Where a service is in development it says so, and where it is a published direction it says that instead.

Constants on this map

Published constants

Earth to Moon384,400 km mean distance

Geostationary orbit35,786 km above the equator

Low Earth OrbitAbout 160 to 2,000 km above the surface

Lunar nightAbout 354 hours

Shadowed floorsBelow 40 kelvin at the south pole

Cislunar volumeRoughly a thousand times the operating volume of today's space economy

Published orbital-mechanics and lunar-science references; consolidated references available in a briefing.

The dossier

Every object on the map, in full.

The same twelve objects, with the paragraph behind each annotation and the published constants that belong to it. This section is static: it is here whether the map is interactive or not.

The regimes

01

LEO

Low Earth Orbit

Low Earth Orbit is where nearly every operating spacecraft is today: roughly 160 to 2,000 kilometers above the surface, a fraction of a second of round trip to the ground, and served by launch, tracking, and communications that already exist as commodity services. It is the baseline this map measures everything else against. Everything outward of it is the part that has none of that yet.

Altitude band: About 160 to 2,000 km above the surface
Orbital period: About 90 minutes at the low end of the band

02

GEO

Geostationary Orbit

Geostationary orbit sits 35,786 kilometers above the equator, the altitude where an orbital period matches one sidereal day and a spacecraft holds station over a fixed point on the ground. It is also the practical outer wall of the space surveillance enterprise. Sensors, catalogs, and operating assumptions were built for the regime inside this ring, and they thin out quickly beyond it.

Altitude: 35,786 km above the equator
Orbital period: One sidereal day

03

CISLUNAR

Cislunar space

Cislunar space is the volume from Earth orbit out past the Moon. The Earth to Moon mean distance is 384,400 kilometers, and the volume that distance encloses is roughly a thousand times the operating volume of today's space economy. That ratio is arithmetic on public orbital mechanics, and it is the argument this company is built on: the sensing, the links, the navigation, and the logistics that cover the regime below geostationary orbit do not cover this one, and the layer that does is not built yet.

Earth to Moon mean distance: 384,400 km
Scale: Roughly a thousand times the operating volume of today's space economy

04

NRHO

Lunar orbit

Lunar orbit is not one place. Low lunar orbit runs close to the surface and is difficult to hold for long without regular maintenance, because the Moon's gravity field is uneven. The near-rectilinear halo orbit family trades closeness for stability and for a near-continuous view of Earth. Which orbit a relay occupies decides what the surface can see and when, which is why orbit selection and network architecture are one decision here rather than two.

Regimes: Low lunar orbit and near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO)
Line of sight: The far side has none to Earth without a relay

05

S. POLE

Lunar surface, south pole

The lunar surface is where the campaign ends and an economy starts, and the south pole is the ground that matters. Permanently shadowed crater floors below forty kelvin hold the water. Rim sites a short distance away hold near-continuous sunlight. Between them runs a night about 354 hours long that every surface system has to survive with no solar generation for the duration. Terrain that hard is the design case, not the stretch goal.

Permanently shadowed floors: Below 40 kelvin
Lunar night: About 354 hours

The watch

06

NEXUS · SDA

What NEXUS is being built to watch

The shaded volume is the design case for NEXUS, the cislunar domain awareness program: detect, track, and characterize what operates between Earth orbit and the Moon, and keep custody of it. We are building the watch. That is stated as intent, not as coverage. The sensing architecture is in development, it is sold as a data and analytics subscription rather than as a hardware program, and nothing drawn on this map is a live track.

Design case: Geostationary orbit out past the Moon
Delivery: Data and analytics subscription, not a hardware program

The network

07

GROUND

EVERLIGHT ground segment

A link that does not drop starts on the ground. WIRES is architecting the EVERLIGHT ground segment: the apertures, the scheduling, and the network operations floor that hand traffic between terrestrial networks and the cislunar links. It is the least visible part of the network and the first part that has to work.

Program: WIRES, Communications, Navigation & Timing

08

RELAY

EVERLIGHT cislunar relay

The cislunar relay nodes are what let a mission subscribe to connectivity and navigation instead of funding its own. EVERLIGHT is designed toward LunaNet interoperability and delay-tolerant networking, which is how a customer roams onto the network rather than rebuilding for it. The nodes ride the small satellite platforms FORGE is being built to manufacture and qualify.

Interoperability: Designed toward LunaNet and delay-tolerant networking
Platforms: The small satellite platforms FORGE is building out

09

LLO NODE

EVERLIGHT lunar orbit relay

A relay in lunar orbit is what turns terrain with no line of sight to Earth into ground a mission can operate on: the far side, the polar approaches, the shadowed floors. Orbit selection and the link budget are the design work behind it, and both sit in architecture. No node is in build.

Coverage intent: Far side, polar approaches, shadowed terrain

10

SURFACE

EVERLIGHT surface links and PNT

On the surface the service is the same one the network carries everywhere else: a link that does not drop and navigation that does not blink, for landers, rovers, and crews working the polar terrain. It is engineered for the hard cases first, including regimes where signals are contested and where satellite navigation from Earth is not available.

Users: Orbiters, landers, rovers, and crews

The campaign

11

P-0

PROSPECTOR-0

PROSPECTOR-0 is the aggregated qualification flight: a shared manifest assembled from operators who each need lunar qualification and none of whom can fund a mission for it. On this map it occupies the transfer corridor, the path from Earth orbit out to lunar space. Every participant keeps their own results. The calibrated measurement chain that makes those results comparable to each other is what the flight leaves behind.

Payload: A shared qualification manifest, slots standard

12

P-1

PROSPECTOR-1

PROSPECTOR-1 is the south pole prospecting campaign: characterize the resource, prove the logistics, return the dataset that prices the lunar economy. On this map it works the permanently shadowed ground at the pole, the coldest natural ground ever measured anywhere in the solar system. The dataset is the point of the campaign and the asset it leaves behind.

Target: Permanently shadowed regions at the south pole

The same volume, rendered

A rendered view, on request.

The schematic above is the page. A rendered three-dimensional view of the same volume is available as an option, and it loads only when you ask for it so the map stays fast for everyone else.

The rendered view needs scripting. The schematic above carries the same twelve objects and the same annotations.

The map in the architecture

A map is a claim about what you can see and where you can act.

Three programs put the annotations on this map. NEXUS is being built to see the volume, WIRES is being built to connect it, and ATLAS is being built to reach the ground at the end of it.

NEXUS

Cislunar Domain Awareness

The awareness volume on the map is the NEXUS design case: see the domain, keep custody, sell the picture as a subscription.

WIRES

Communications, Navigation & Timing

Every gold node on the map is a EVERLIGHT node: ground segment, cislunar relay, lunar orbit relay, surface links and timing.

ATLAS

Precision Lunar Delivery

The south pole end of the map is the ATLAS design case: precision delivery onto polar and permanently shadowed terrain.

Bring us the part of this volume you have to operate in.

Program offices, operators, and partners can request a briefing on any object on this map, including the architecture behind the annotations and the schedule behind the labels.

Request a Briefing Read the campaign plan