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October 23, 2026
By Burak Oktenli
Key Takeaways:
The article proposes that space agencies and physics laboratories jointly study the feasibility of a particle collider beyond Earth, noting that a 2022 analysis of an 11,000-kilometer lunar ring suggested proton-proton energies of 14 peta-electronvolts under optimistic assumptions.
It highlights extreme engineering barriers, including an estimated power requirement of about 10 terawatts for synchrotron-radiation compensation—orders of magnitude above planned lunar nuclear reactors—and challenges of cryogenics, thermal control, lunar dust, and machine protection.
The author argues that any such machine would require multinational cooperation, staged technology demonstrations, and a clear scientific case that demonstrates added value over terrestrial projects such as CERN’s Future Circular Collider.
Astronauts flew around the Moon this year, and Europe is deciding on its next great collider. A particle collider beyond Earth could reach energies no terrestrial machine can, but its power, cooling and control problems deserve an open, international study before anyone commits to building one.
In April, four astronauts flew around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crew to travel there since 1972. China, which tested its new Long March 10 rocket and Mengzhou crew capsule in February, aims to land its own astronauts before 2030. In May, CERN’s governing council named an electron-positron Future Circular Collider its preferred next flagship and said it could decide on the project by 2028.
The return to the Moon and the search for the next great physics machine are usually reported as separate stories. One of the boldest ideas in physics joins them: a particle collider built beyond Earth. Observatories in space already examine the universe. A laboratory beyond Earth could test its fundamental laws at energies no machine on the ground can reach.
The idea deserves a serious feasibility study, carried out by space agencies and physics laboratories together and open to more than one nation. It also deserves candor about how far it remains from a design.
Why bigger rings matter
The appeal starts with a basic relationship in accelerator physics. In a circular proton collider, the attainable beam energy depends on the strength of the bending magnets and the radius of the ring, as Fermilab’s Vladimir Shiltsev explains in a survey of the field’s ultimate limits. A larger ring can reach higher energies without a proportional increase in magnetic field. Space offers room for structures far larger than any tunnel, while changing almost every condition under which they must operate.
In a peer-reviewed study published in 2022, physicists James Beacham and Frank Zimmermann examined a collider roughly 11,000 kilometers around the Moon. Assuming an optimistic 20-tesla magnetic field, it could reach a proton-proton collision energy of 14 peta-electronvolts, about 1,000 times the design energy of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The same parameters imply about 8.5 terawatts of synchrotron radiation, and the authors concluded that “a power source at the level of 10 TW would thus appear to be required.”
That number needs context. In 2025, NASA set a goal of launching a lunar nuclear reactor producing at least 100 kilowatts of electricity by 2030. The collider study’s requirement is about 100 million times larger. The gap does not kill the idea, but it defines the first research question: what is the most ambitious machine whose energy needs could credibly be met, and would it answer questions important enough to justify building it?
The scientific motivation is real. The Higgs boson’s properties remain a route to testing the Standard Model of particle physics, and the nature of dark matter remains unknown. Future colliders could search for new particles and interactions as well as subtle deviations in processes already measured. Higher energy widens the territory experiments can explore without promising that anything new waits at the next threshold.
A credible proposal must therefore name specific measurements and estimate the data needed to make them. Energy alone is an incomplete measure of performance. Luminosity, which sets how often a given collision occurs, matters because a rare process may require an enormous sample before it can be separated from background. A machine that reached extraordinary energy but produced too few useful events could disappoint.
Space changes the engineering
The natural vacuum and cold surroundings of some locations beyond Earth look attractive. Their benefits must be weighed against the real operating environment, including sunlight, nearby surfaces, contamination and the heat the equipment itself generates. A general description of space is no substitute for a thermal or vacuum budget.
Cooling shows why. The Large Hadron Collider’s main magnets operate at 1.9 kelvin, colder than outer space, using an extensive cryogenic system. A machine built on comparable magnets would still need active refrigeration on the Moon or in orbit. Sunshields and careful siting could reduce incoming heat, but neither would remove the internal heat loads.
NASA’s thermal-control guidance explains the constraint. A spacecraft’s temperature follows the balance of heat absorbed, generated, stored and rejected, and in vacuum the excess must ultimately be radiated away. For a collider, the power plant, radio-frequency systems, cryogenic machinery and detectors would all add to that load, so the radiators would have to be designed alongside the accelerator. Moving the machine off Earth also leaves synchrotron radiation in place: particles still shed energy whenever their paths bend, and much of the lunar design’s power would go to replacing it.
An orbital facility and a lunar installation would pose different problems. A collider assembled in orbit would have to hold its components in precise relative position to preserve the beam optics. A lunar ring could be anchored to the ground but would demand surface preparation, transport, assembly and maintenance across extraordinary distances. Lunar dust adds a constraint to every exposed system. NASA notes that dust on solar panels reduces available power, obscures camera lenses and coats thermal radiators, raising equipment temperatures. A credible design would also show how a failed magnet, sensor or cooling module could be diagnosed and replaced, and what each repair would cost in lost operating time.
A laboratory that stays under control
A collider concentrates enormous energy in tightly controlled beams. The energy stored in each beam of the Large Hadron Collider reaches up to 364 megajoules, and CERN’s machine-protection literature describes how uncontrolled beam losses can damage equipment unless loss monitors, interlocks and beam-dump systems act in time. A facility beyond Earth would have to demonstrate equivalent protection under its own conditions.
That requirement should shape the role of automation. Software could tune beams, diagnose faults and schedule maintenance, but independent protection systems should keep the authority to stop beam operation when essential conditions fail. A break in communication with Earth should trigger a predetermined safe response suited to the fault and the machine’s state. Those behaviors should be tested early, including recovery from misalignment, degraded cooling and faulty measurements, before stored beam energy is increased.
A machine too large for one nation
The largest physics machines are already beyond the reach of a single country. The Future Circular Collider would run about 91 kilometers and cost about 15.3 billion Swiss francs, or roughly $19 billion, and its backers are looking to countries outside CERN’s membership to help close the funding gap. China’s rival design, the Circular Electron Positron Collider, was left out of the country’s 2026-2030 five-year plan. Its study leader, Wang Yifang, said the team would try again in 2030 unless CERN’s machine is approved first, in which case, he said, “we will seek to join FCC, and give up CEPC.”
A collider beyond Earth would multiply that logic. The Moon is becoming a field of competing programs, with the U.S.-led Artemis partnership on one side and China’s planned lunar research station, developed with Russia, on the other. CERN itself was founded in 1954 so that scientists from nations recently at war could build a shared laboratory. A serious study of a lunar or orbital collider could serve a similar purpose, giving space agencies a joint scientific question whose answer no single program could reach alone.
There is already a model of cooperation between spaceflight and particle physics. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, installed on the International Space Station in 2011, studies cosmic rays in a search for antimatter and dark matter, run by 44 institutions from America, Europe and Asia under joint U.S. Energy Department and NASA sponsorship. A collider would add the far harder task of preparing, accelerating and repeatedly colliding opposing beams, but the institutional template exists.
Build the research path in stages
The next useful step would be a jointly reviewed study comparing terrestrial, lunar and orbital options against the same scientific objectives. It should quantify the required collision sample and detector performance, then estimate power, mass, construction, operations and eventual decommissioning for each. An elegant ring geometry would have to survive that whole-system assessment.
Technology demonstrations should then target the uncertainties that matter most. A compact flight experiment might test precision beam transport or the behavior of an accelerator component in relevant space conditions. Separate demonstrations could show whether superconducting systems, thermal hardware and robotic maintenance can meet their requirements. Each should answer a defined question that improves the next design decision.
The study should also respect the priorities physicists have already set on the ground. CERN’s strategy keeps completion of the high-luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider as its highest medium-term priority, with the Future Circular Collider as the preferred next flagship. Those are the benchmarks against which any machine beyond Earth must prove its added value.
A CERN beyond Earth could one day become an extraordinary instrument for understanding nature. The case for beginning the study is credible today, and the case for building the facility will have to be earned. The nations now returning to the Moon should decide together what science it is for.
About Burak Oktenli
Burak Oktenli holds an MBA and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His research addresses the governance of authority in autonomous and AI-enabled systems, and his writing has appeared at the Modern War Institute at West Point, RUSI, RealClearDefense, RealClearMarkets, and Geopolitical Monitor. He is the author of Authority Architectures for Autonomous Systems, a ten-volume series on how authority in autonomous systems is delegated, monitored and recovered, at authority-architecture.me.
View all posts by Burak Oktenli →
The next useful step would be a jointly reviewed study comparing terrestrial, lunar and orbital options against the same scientific objectives. It should quantify the required collision sample and detector performance, then estimate power, mass, construction, operations and eventual decommissioning for each. An elegant ring geometry would have to survive that whole-system assessment.
Technology demonstrations should then target the uncertainties that matter most. A compact flight experiment might test precision beam transport or the behavior of an accelerator component in relevant space conditions. Separate demonstrations could show whether superconducting systems, thermal hardware and robotic maintenance can meet their requirements. Each should answer a defined question that improves the next design decision.
The study should also respect the priorities physicists have already set on the ground. CERN’s strategy keeps completion of the high-luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider as its highest medium-term priority, with the Future Circular Collider as the preferred next flagship. Those are the benchmarks against which any machine beyond Earth must prove its added value.
A CERN beyond Earth could one day become an extraordinary instrument for understanding nature. The case for beginning the study is credible today, and the case for building the facility will have to be earned. The nations now returning to the Moon should decide together what science it is for.
About Burak Oktenli
Burak Oktenli holds an MBA and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His research addresses the governance of authority in autonomous and AI-enabled systems, and his writing has appeared at the Modern War Institute at West Point, RUSI, RealClearDefense, RealClearMarkets, and Geopolitical Monitor. He is the author of Authority Architectures for Autonomous Systems, a ten-volume series on how authority in autonomous systems is delegated, monitored and recovered, at authority-architecture.me.
View all posts by Burak Oktenli →
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