What is it about?
This paper designs a connected "space ecosystem" linking the Moon, Mars, and asteroids through shared logistics, fuel depots, life-support systems, and a new international governing body. It separates what is proven today from what remains aspirational, using evidence tiers.
Featured Image
Photo by Dmitry Grachyov on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This work is distinctive in three ways. First, it is genuinely integrative: rather than treating governance, infrastructure, resource utilization, autonomy, life support, and human factors as separate problems, it maps all six onto a single analytical framework (Table 2) so they can be compared on common terms. Second, its central institutional contribution [the Space Ecosystem Organization (SE Org)] is justified through a rigorous mandate-gap analysis (Table 5) that identifies specific functions no existing body (OST, COPUOS, ITU, Artemis Accords) performs for sustained off-world operations. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it enforces intellectual honesty through a three-tier evidence classification system and explicit "evidence-based" versus "projective" labeling. In a field prone to conflating aspiration with capability, this paper insists that MOXIE producing 10 g/h of oxygen is not the same as a crew-scale propellant plant. The phased, criteria-gated roadmap (Table 6) ensures that long-horizon elements are not mistaken for near-term deliverables. This matters because the decisions made in the next decade (about standards, governance, and infrastructure investment) will shape whether humanity's expansion beyond Earth is coordinated and equitable or fragmented and extractive.
Perspectives
This is the most personal of my publications because it represents my attempt to synthesize everything I have learned across my other papers (spaceports, logistics, sovereignty, satellite servicing) into a single coherent vision. The hardest part was restraint. I wanted to describe thriving asteroid-belt communities and generation ships, but the evidence simply does not support those claims yet. So I built a methodology that forces me (and the reader) to distinguish between what we have demonstrated and what we hope to achieve. The SE Org proposal emerged from a frustration I felt repeatedly that every paper I wrote kept encountering the same institutional vacuum. Who sets docking standards for a lunar spaceport? Who adjudicates competing water-ice claims at Shackleton Crater? Who enforces planetary protection when a commercial company wants to mine a scientifically sensitive asteroid? The answer, today, is no one. I do not claim the SE Org is the perfect solution, but I believe the mandate-gap analysis makes a compelling case that something must fill this role, and soon. My hope is that this paper becomes a reference point for the conversations that will inevitably happen as Artemis missions return humans to the lunar surface.
Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba
University of Florida
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Integrated Architecture for Interplanetary Infrastructure: Systems Integration of ISRU, Autonomy, and Logistics for Sustainable Lunar and Martian Operations, New Space, July 2026, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/21680256261469457.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
