The National Academies Space Weather Roundtable met in Washington on September 1 and 2, bringing government, university, and commercial experts into the same room at a useful moment for lunar operations. Artemis II has already put crews back around the Moon, Artemis III is being shaped around lander docking demonstrations, and the first sustained surface campaigns are now close enough that space weather can no longer sit in the background as a scientific specialty. The cislunar issue is simple. Solar storms do not respect launch manifests, EVA timelines, relay schedules, or commercial service contracts. A warning that is good enough for satellites in Earth orbit may not be good enough for astronauts outside low Earth orbit, uncrewed landers near the lunar south pole, and privately operated navigation or communications spacecraft spread across the Earth-Moon system. AI-generated image Space weather forecasting is becoming an operations layer for Artemis and commercial lunar missions. Why This Meeting Matters Now The Space Weather Roundtable is not a launch event or a hardware rollout. Its importance is institutional. The National Academies describes the forum as a way to connect the federal Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation interagency work with universities and commercial providers. The agenda area includes forecasting, impacts, preparedness, risk communication, data buys, and the handoff between research and operations. That sounds bureaucratic until it is placed next to the Artemis schedule. NASA and NOAA already treated Artemis II as a test case for human deep-space space-weather support. NOAA described the mission as a model for extending environmental monitoring beyond Earth, with space weather warnings helping protect astronauts from solar radiation during the flight around the Moon. The next phase is harder because lunar operations will include more assets, more companies, more surface time, and less ability to hide inside Earth's magnetic protection. Low Earth orbit benefits from partial shielding by the magnetosphere. The Moon does not. Cislunar crews and spacecraft can be exposed to solar energetic particles, coronal mass ejection impacts, geomagnetic storm side effects, communications disruption, degraded navigation, charging risks, and radiation dose constraints that can change a mission plan quickly. The operational shift For Apollo, space weather was a mission risk. For Artemis, it becomes an infrastructure service. Forecasts, alerts, data formats, and decision rules have to work across NASA, NOAA, Space Force, commercial landers, relay providers, and surface operators. 2 Roundtable days in Washington 9+ Days Artemis II spent in deep-space operations 2027 Artemis III demonstration target year 2028 First Artemis landing target The Risk Is Not Just Radiation Dose Radiation is the headline risk because it directly affects crew health. A major solar particle event can force astronauts to shelter, cancel an EVA, change a trajectory decision, or shorten exposed work. Future Artemis surface sorties at the lunar south pole will make that question more difficult. Crews may be separated from the lander by terrain, operating near permanently shadowed regions, working around rovers, and relying on power and communications links that also have to ride through the same storm. The wider cislunar economy adds more failure modes. A lunar relay satellite may need to maintain pointing during disturbed conditions. A landing radar or navigation receiver may face interference or charged-particle effects at the wrong time. A solar-powered rover near a crater rim may be asked to pause at exactly the moment a payload team wants science data. A privately operated ground antenna may receive an alert through one channel while a mission customer expects a different format through another. This is where the Roundtable's focus on practical standards matters. Forecast quality is only part of the problem. Operators need shared thresholds, trusted alert paths, clear definitions, machine-readable products, and rehearsal habits. The Moon economy will not scale if every mission has to invent its own space weather language. AI-generated image Solar alerts can affect EVAs, rover traverses, relay availability, and lander operations at the same time. Cislunar asset Space weather concern Operational consequence Crewed Orion or lander Solar energetic particles Shelter timing, dose management, trajectory decisions Surface EVA team Radiation and communications disruption Traverse limits, abort rules, sample priority changes Lunar relay spacecraft Charging, radiation, pointing effects Reduced link margin or temporary service degradation Commercial lander Avionics upsets and navigation uncertainty Landing timeline constraints and contingency holds From Forecasts to Decision Rules The hardest part of space weather operations is often not detecting the event. It is deciding what the warning means for a specific vehicle, crew, orbit, surface site, or commercial contract. A forecast has to become a rule: continue, delay, shelter, change mode, preserve power, reduce exposure, or accept the risk. NASA and NOAA's Artemis II work gave the United States a recent deep-space rehearsal. That flight was brief, centrally managed, and focused on a single crewed spacecraft. Future Artemis campaigns will be less tidy. NASA could have Orion in flight, a SpaceX Starship HLS test campaign, Blue Origin Blue Moon development work, CLPS landers, south pole science packages, private relays, and Space Force cislunar awareness efforts all needing related environmental information. Commercial providers will push for service-level clarity. If a company sells lunar communications, navigation, payload hosting, or surface mobility, customers will ask what happens during solar storms. That means forecasts become part of contracts, insurance discussions, autonomy rules, mission assurance reviews, and fault-protection design. AI-generated image The next step is turning scientific forecasts into operational products that different lunar missions can use consistently. What a useful cislunar warning layer needs • Common thresholds: Operators need shared language for storm severity, exposure windows, and communications risk. • Machine-readable alerts: Automated spacecraft and mission planning tools cannot rely only on human-readable bulletins. • Commercial data paths: Private sensors and forecast firms need a way to plug into government operations without creating confusion. • Exercise history: Crews and flight teams need rehearsed shelter, EVA cancelation, and service degradation procedures before the warning arrives. The Commercial Data Question One of the Roundtable's listed areas of interest is commercial space weather data buys. That is a quiet but important phrase. Cislunar infrastructure will not be served only by federal spacecraft and federal ground networks. Private companies are already building the communications, mobility, hosting, sensing, and delivery systems NASA wants to use at the Moon. Space weather services are likely to follow the same pattern. A commercial provider could add value with additional sensors, faster analytics, specialized lunar-route forecasts, or mission-specific risk products. The federal government still has to decide how those products are validated, purchased, distributed, and integrated with NOAA's official warning role. Bad data is dangerous, but slow or incomplete data can also be dangerous when a crew has hours, not days, to adjust. The procurement angle matters because lunar operations will include multiple buyers. NASA may need one product for crew safety. A CLPS lander company may need another for avionics risk. A relay operator may need service forecasts for customer planning. A Space Force office may care about space domain awareness and resilience. A standards discussion that looks abstract in 2026 could become the basis for service agreements by the t