About EarthCup

The Earth Cup is a pivotal race of our era — perhaps the defining competition of the Anthropocene, the age where human activity is reshaping the planet. We face the rapid loss of biodiversity, accelerating climate change, and the very real possibility that life as we know it could be irreversibly altered. In this moment, we hold not just the fate of one species, but the keys to a sustainable future for all known intelligent life in the universe.

What is the Earth Cup Movement?

The Earth Cup movement is a global, pro-social, pro-ecology vessel: a recognition of what Buckminster Fuller called “Spaceship Earth.” Our planet and every human ecosystem form a complex adaptive system. As inhabitants of this system, we must act together to regenerate Earth in its full dimension — for the planet itself, for humanity, and for the vast web of life that surrounds us. Earth Cup invites our species to move beyond its childhood of turmoil and destruction, and into a mature era of collaboration, renewal, and planetary stewardship.

Mission

Our mission begins right here, on a planet with incredible biodiversity and the capacity to support humans and many other forms of life in a richly interconnected web. Through the Earth Cup movement we seek to ensure that humanity knows how to survive and thrive — consciously, ethically, and in harmony with the ecosystems on which we depend.

Vision

Imagine a global open competition in which nations, space agencies, and private entities design and deploy advanced solar-sailcraft in a friendly, rules-based framework. The Earth Cup will accelerate our capacity for solar-sail technology, not merely as an exploration toy, but as a tool for planetary-scale innovation: climate control, solar energy collection and redirection, and deep-space exploration at speeds that may exceed one million miles per hour. By fusing innovation, resilience, regeneration, collective governance and societal achievement, this competition becomes a spectacular showcase of humanity’s capacity to rise.

Goal

We are the cradle of all known life in the universe, and humanity is only just awakening to our role as part of a larger super-organism. The Earth Cup movement is our demonstration piece: proof that we can evolve beyond infancy, understand our interdependence with billions of other lifeforms, and step into a future where life — in all its splendid diversity — thrives rather than merely survives. The goal is not just survival; it is collective awakening, regeneration, and mastery of our destiny as stewards of Earth and beyond.

History

Earth Cup is an open challenge to all peoples and nations — a friendly race founded on innovation, cooperation, and competition among communities committed to resilience and regeneration. The journey begins in earnest in 2024 when partners including Capital Yacht Club (Washington D.C.) issue the first global “gauntlet.” The inaugural Earth Cup will launch up to 70 solar-sailing spacecraft in 2025, starting from low Earth orbit (~1,500 miles) and racing toward the Lagrange L1 point (~975,000 miles between Earth and the Sun).

Inspired by the legendary America’s Cup — the world’s oldest international sporting trophy — Earth Cup transforms the spirit of racing into a race for our future. Just as sailing once challenged the boundaries of sea travel, we now challenge the frontier of solar sailing and planetary engineering.

Why Now?

We live in a time of extraordinary transformation — both peril and possibility. This period is often called the Anthropocene, where human impact has become a geological force, or even a point of singularity in our history. Never before have we possessed the collective intelligence, technological capacity, and shared intention to tackle global warming, nuclear risk, inequality, misinformation and accelerating change. At the same time, vulnerability is rising. The Earth Cup is organized to accelerate the innovation, collaboration, and governance needed to steer our planet toward a new healthy equilibrium — and to reach beyond.

The L1 Project

One of the cornerstone objectives of Earth Cup is advancing the Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) concept through our “L1 Project.” By leveraging solar-sail craft and interconnected deflector panels spanning some 6,000 km in diameter and 100,000 km deep, we aim to modulate solar radiant energy entering Earth’s biosphere. These panels will form nodes of a distributed, collectively-intelligent grid, each containing solar PV cells, computing and communications infrastructures. SRM may sound like science fiction today, but the basic technologies (solar-sailing, orbital deployments) are already proven by agencies like NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Earth Cup is catalyzing the innovation ecosystem that can make this reality.