Can Interlune Mine Helium-3 on the Moon?

The Washington Post reports:

Nearly a decade ago, Congress passed a law that allows private American space companies the rights to resources they mine on celestial bodies, including the moon.

Now, there's a private venture that says it intends to do just that.

Founded by a pair of former executives from Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos, and an Apollo astronaut, the company, Interlune, announced itself publicly Wednesday by saying it has raised $18 million and is developing the technology to harvest and bring materials back from the moon... Specifically, Interlune is focused on Helium-3, a stable isotope that is scarce on Earth but plentiful on the moon and could be used as fuel in nuclear fusion reactors as well as helping power the quantum computing industry.

The company, based in Seattle, has been working for about four years on the technology, which comes as the commercial sector is working with NASA on its goal of building an enduring presence on and around the moon... Rob Meyerson, the former president of Blue Origin, co-founded Interlune with Gary Lai, another former executive at Blue, and Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who flew to the moon during Apollo 17... In an interview, Meyerson said that the company intends to be the first to collect, return and then sell lunar resources and test the 2015 law. There is a large demand for Helium-3 in the quantum computing industry, which requires some of its systems to operate in extremely cold temperatures, and Interlune has already lined up a 'customer that wants to buy lunar resources in large quantities,' he said.

'We intend to be the first to go commercialize and deliver and support those customers,' he said. NASA might want to be a customer as well. In 2020, it said it was looking for companies to collect rocks and dirt from the lunar surface and sell them to NASA as part of a technology development program that would eventually help astronauts 'live off the land....' The company's funding round was led by the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, whose founder and general partner, Alexis Ohanian, said that the space sector has become far more appealing to investors. 'The space economy is something we can actually talk about with a straight face now, and I think some of the smartest people on the planet are making those efforts,' he said...

He said he was aware that it might take years, or longer for a moon mining business to make money. But he said that, 'we're comfortable waiting for a decade plus to see those returns.'


NASA is planning more missions like the Intuitive Machines landing earlier this year, according to the article, 'which it says will not only help pave the way for humans to return to the moon but for private industry to begin commercial operations there as well.' Interlune plans 'a prospecting machine' as soon as 2026, followed by an 'end-to-end demonstration' in 2028 that harvests and returns a small quanity of Helium-3, and then full-scale operations by 2030.

'China has also said that it is interested in extracting other resources, including Helium-3, which it said was present in a sample it returned from the moon in 2020.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.