Community Guidelines

Last updated: September 2026

AlienLab Community is a free and open global community for researchers, engineers, students, founders, companies and space enthusiasts interested in Space AI and intelligent space systems.

Our goal is simple:

Connect people. Share knowledge. Build together.

Community membership is free. We encourage members to learn, collaborate, contribute to open-source projects, participate in challenges and help shape AlienLab Open Missions.

1. Our principles

AlienLab Community is built around four principles:

We encourage open discussion, knowledge sharing and collaboration wherever possible.

Treat other members with professionalism, curiosity and respect.

We believe meaningful progress comes from people building together rather than competing for attention.

Space, AI and robotics can involve sensitive and safety-critical technologies. Members are expected to contribute responsibly and comply with applicable laws and regulations.

2. Who can join

AlienLab Community is open to people from around the world, including:

• Students
• Researchers
• Engineers and developers
• Founders
• Industry professionals
• Educators
• Space enthusiasts

You do not need to be a professional researcher or engineer to participate.

Membership is free.

3. Respectful participation

We welcome disagreement and technical debate, but discussions must remain constructive.

Do not engage in:

• harassment or bullying;
• discrimination or hate speech;
• personal attacks;
• threats or intimidation;
• deliberately disruptive behaviour;
• spam or repeated unsolicited promotion;
• impersonation or misrepresentation;
• illegal activity.

Criticise ideas, not people.

4. Sharing responsibly

Only share information, code, data, images or other materials that you have the right to share.

Do not post:

• confidential information;
• proprietary information belonging to an employer, university, customer or other third party;
• personal data without appropriate permission;
• material protected by contractual confidentiality obligations;
• unlawfully obtained information;
• export-controlled, classified or otherwise restricted technical information.

Public AlienLab community channels should be treated as public spaces.

If you would not be comfortable publishing something openly on the internet, do not post it in a public AlienLab channel.

5. Intellectual property

AlienLab encourages open-source collaboration while respecting the intellectual property of contributors and third parties.

Participation in the Community does not automatically transfer ownership of your intellectual property to AlienLab.

Specific projects may operate under their own:

• open-source licence;
• dataset licence;
• contribution terms;
• challenge rules;
• mission participation terms.

Those project-specific terms will apply to contributions made to that project.

Before contributing code, data or other material, please review the applicable licence and contribution rules.

6. Inventions and public disclosure

AlienLab Labs may develop inventions and patents alongside open-source activities.

Public disclosure can affect the ability to protect an invention.

Therefore:

Do not disclose potentially patentable or commercially sensitive inventions in public Community channels unless you have deliberately decided to make them public.

If you believe you have an invention that may be suitable for collaboration with AlienLab, contact us before publishing technical details publicly.

7. Open-source contributions

AlienLab may host open-source software, datasets, models, benchmarks and documentation.

Contributors should:

• respect the licence of each project;
• provide work they are entitled to contribute;
• acknowledge third-party material where required;
• avoid introducing incompatible licences;
• avoid submitting confidential or restricted code;
• document contributions clearly;
• engage constructively with maintainers and other contributors.

Individual repositories may contain additional contribution instructions.

8. Challenges

AlienLab Challenges focus on solving clearly defined technical or scientific problems.

Each Challenge may have separate rules covering:

• eligibility;
• submissions;
• evaluation;
• deadlines;
• prizes;
• publication;
• intellectual property;
• use of submitted material.

Where Challenge Rules exist, those rules take priority for that Challenge.

Members must not manipulate results, submit plagiarised work or misrepresent the origin of their submissions.

9. Open Missions

AlienLab Open Missions are collaborative projects designed around a shared Space AI or space-technology goal.

Participation may involve research, software, simulation, datasets, benchmarking, education or collaboration with external mission partners.

Participation in an Open Mission does not guarantee that a contribution will:

• be selected;
• be deployed;
• fly in space;
• become part of a commercial system; or
• result in authorship, ownership or financial reward.

Each Open Mission may publish its own participation and contribution terms.

10. Research integrity

AlienLab supports responsible research collaboration.

Normal standards of research integrity apply.

Members should not:

• fabricate or falsify results;
• plagiarise;
• misrepresent contribution or authorship;
• offer or request authorship without meaningful contribution;
• submit the same work deceptively;
• misuse confidential research material.

Authorship should reflect genuine intellectual or practical contribution.

Participation in AlienLab Community does not guarantee authorship on any publication.

11. Commercial activity

AlienLab Community is free to join.

Members may discuss companies, products, jobs, research opportunities and relevant commercial developments where they contribute meaningfully to the Community.

However, the Community should not be used primarily for:

• unsolicited advertising;
• repetitive self-promotion;
• spam;
• mass recruitment messages;
• inappropriate solicitation.

AlienLab's commercial Services are separate from free Community participation.

12. Safety and legal compliance

Members must not use AlienLab Community resources to support unlawful or deliberately harmful activities.

Space AI, robotics and autonomous systems may involve technologies with safety, security or dual-use implications.

Members are responsible for ensuring their own activities comply with applicable:

• laws;
• regulations;
• export controls;
• sanctions;
• contractual obligations;
• institutional requirements.

AlienLab may restrict discussion or contributions where reasonably necessary for legal, safety or security reasons.

13. Moderation

AlienLab may moderate public Community spaces to maintain a constructive and safe environment.

Depending on the circumstances, AlienLab may:

• remove content;
• issue a warning;
• restrict access to particular channels or projects;
• suspend participation;
• remove a member from Community platforms.

Serious misconduct may result in immediate removal.

We aim to use moderation proportionately and fairly.

14. Third-party platforms

AlienLab Community may use external platforms including services such as:

• Discord
• GitHub
• email/newsletter platforms
• event platforms
• other collaboration tools

Use of those platforms is also subject to their own terms and policies.

AlienLab does not control the operation of third-party platforms.

15. Privacy

Personal information associated with Community participation is handled in accordance with the AlienLab Privacy Notice.

Members should also respect the privacy of other participants and should not collect, publish or redistribute personal information without an appropriate reason and permission.

16. Reporting concerns

If you experience inappropriate behaviour, believe content violates these Guidelines, or have concerns about Community safety, please contact:

community@alienlab.co.uk

For privacy matters:

privacy@alienlab.co.uk

For legal or intellectual-property matters:

legal@alienlab.co.uk

Reports will be reviewed as appropriate.

17. Changes to these Guidelines

AlienLab Community will evolve over time.

We may update these Guidelines as new projects, Challenges, Open Missions or collaboration models are introduced.

The latest version will be published on the AlienLab website.

18. Build together

AlienLab exists to bring people together around the future of Space AI.

Be curious.

Be constructive.

Share responsibly.

Respect the work of others.

And build something meaningful.