Interested skilled persons are invited to engage in the NSS Orbital Space Settlement Design (OSSD) Project. Based on terms of reference adopted by NSS in March 2026, the end goal of this five year effort is a complete engineering design for the first rotating space settlement in cislunar space. These Terms of Reference formally defines the mandate, scope, responsibilities, boundaries, and working methods of the project.
The project will begin with a workshop at the 2026 Space Settlement Summit. The focus of this workshop will be twofold. The first is to take an initial look at the use case for a rotating orbital space settlement at some location in the Earth-Moon system. The second is the review, expansion, explication, and explanation of the questions that must be answered to complete the engineering design of an orbital space settlement. Additionally, the dependencies between the questions will be discussed.
The workshop will be led by the OSSD Project Leads: Rick Jenet, Dale Skran, and Bryce Meyer. The questions will be divided into three groups to allow persons with differing interests and skills to participate in the section they find the most interesting. The three sessions will be (1) high level requirements, (2) agricultural/biological, and (3) physical/construction.
