The Eskey System: A Model for Lunar Addresses based on Low Slope Routes and Quadrangles

Megan Eskey created a framework for planetary addresses based on quadrangles and low slope routes. The Eskey System is considered to be the first and optimal model to date for planetary addresses based on a system of roads. It uses current International Astronomical Union (IAU) nomenclature guidelines as the inspiration, and defines the syntax based on widely accepted and adopted cartographic elements. Read more in the Grand Strand Astronomers’ monthly newsletter, the Astrogator.

Her work was first presented at the Interplanetary Infrastructure session at the 2024 International Space Development Conference (ISDC). Slides are available on SlideShare and the recorded talks are available on YouTube.

The Eskey System defines a methodology for charting lunar roads using optimal landing sites and other points of interest, and extends the model to Mars. Other planetary bodies such as Venus and Mercury also have associated quadrangles with provisional or approved names, but don’t have environments that lend themselves well to building transport routes.

The methodology lays the groundwork for multiple use cases, including applying the lunar post roads towards determining territorial boundaries on the Moon, similar to the deconfliction “safety zones” as defined by NASA’s Artemis Accords. Post roads could be utilized to resolve territorial disputes, and unlike safety zones, are permanent in nature and have legal precedents on earth.

Similar to the Trump Administration’s Chapter 8 in the 2020 annual report by his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), the framework approaches the boundaries of the international space treaties without crossing them. Legislation to provide private space miners rights to the natural planetary resources could imply the same rights for the private planetary roads.

“Frameworks such as the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act and the Artemis Accords enhance property rights by providing clear expectations of the benefits one can receive from their investment and providing a list of principles that partner nations will follow as a way to encourage economic activity in space.“

- Chapter 8, CEA 2020 Annual Report, January 2021

Megan Eskey is the originator of OpenStack, an open source software release by NASA and Rackspace in 2010. Her design for OpenNASA v2.0 provided the inspiration to the Nebula cloud computing team. After studying her architecture, Nebula shifted resources from a hardware-based model with servers configured in a shipping container, to an open source model that included one of her components, also named Open Stack. Her team was one of the first at NASA to bring open source into the agency, standing up a WordPress intranet called InsideAmes in 2007. Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) is an open source mapping solution that provides one of the best platforms for making the first lunar maps.

Megan Eskey was the NASA Ames rep for a web registry called the Agency Web Registration System (AWRS) and has used that software as a model for her conceptual architecture, which consists of a planetary road registry connected to a network of rover route mapping software companies such as Skycorp. Route mapping software can be enhanced by taking into account the fractal structure of most lunar features, where the perimeter around some lunar features changes by an order of magnitude depending on the distance scale. In terms more familiar with the internet startup community, Reloquence is building and scaling a 2-sided marketplace that matches cartographers with brands such as space mining professionals and gaming companies to commission or license maps with a shared copyright.

“We find that most of the lunar surface exhibits fractal behavior over the given scales ranging from 1 to 256 m. Lunar maria have higher fractal dimensions than other geological units, while those of volcanic areas and highlands are lower than their surroundings. Simple and flat surfaces have low values of similar ratios and these areas indicate low surface roughness and young ages. Older-aged areas, such as the Hertzsprung basin, have low fractal dimensions and high similar ratios by their complicated topography.”

- The Fractal Nature of Planetary Landforms and Implications to Geologic Mapping, Stuart J. Robbins, Earth Space Sci. 2018 May; 5(5): 211–220.

Like a telescopic steering wheel, the planetary roads can help sky watchers and rovers navigate the complexity of the planetary features, avoiding steep craters and other barriers on the path.

In her early career, Megan Eskey implemented a constraint-based scheduling system during her tenure with the planning and scheduling group in the AI lab at NASA Ames. Today, systems like SEXTANT at MIT and GRTOP at the University of Arizona leverage similar technology to map sophisticated rover traverses using parameters such as total cost, solar power consumption and illumination to quickly and accurately generate traverses that are simultaneously optimized for numerous constraints, including the lowest number of deployment steps, the shortest traverse based on 3D Euclidean distance, the smoothest traverse with respect to terrain roughness, the least altitude change, or any combination of these.

Megan Eskey is the first to define a field of study called “space roadbotics,” and has written an executive report that puts her framework into the context of real-world use cases such as traversing caves and canyons on Mars, and the Apollo 15 mission, which included the first manned rover on the Moon and was the first road trip in space. A space logistics platform coordinating an international fleet of roadbots could be viewed as something akin to “Uber Space,” with the goal of building a network of transport routes for space mining or human settlements on the Moon and Mars.

Please get in touch if you would like a copy of the white paper, which defines the syntax and names the first 5 roads in space, and the executive report, which includes an appendix linking the lunar landing sites with a system of roads.

Megan Eskey is a graduate of the University of Southern California, with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science. She was trained at the NASA Academy of Program and Project Leadership (APPL). Her early-stage, pre-revenue startup, Reloquence, launched from the San Diego chapter of Founder Institute, an accelerator for investible, scalable C corps.

To date, 32 US roads have been named and localized as a nod to the 32 Apollo astronauts, including Wingo Epps Circle, the first road in space. Heller Eskey Highway, the second road in space and the first highway, was named for a collection of 8 unpublished short stories written in the early 1950s by her father, David Eskey. His editor was none other than Joseph Heller of Catch-22 fame. Her tentative title for the book is A Perfect Catch: The Dave Ellas Series.