One Giant Leap for Moon Mining

The race is on to extract helium-3 from the lunar surface—and Interlune is first at the launchpad, pursuing a resource that could power industries for decades

- by JOSHUA RHETT MILLER

SURFACE STRATEGY Interlune's Harvester will use sensors and radar to map its most efficient lunar route.

A SEATTLE-BASED STARTUP wants to redefine the concept of a Harvest Moon. Interlune, launched in 2020 by former Blue Origin executives, develops excavation equipment and technology to mine the moon for an extremely valuable and rare helium isotope—and already has customers lined up, including the U.S. government.

“At $20 million a kilogram, helium-3 is the only resource in the universe that is priced high enough to warrant going to space and bringing it back to Earth,” Interlune cofounder and CEO Rob Meyerson told Newsweek. “We felt like...we can make the economics work and that’s where we are today.”

If successfully extracted from lunar soil, or regolith, where Interlune estimates up to a million metric tons is concentrated, the abundance of helium-3 could revolutionize a number of industries, including quantum computing, national security and medical imaging. The isotope also “holds promise” as a potential fuel source for nuclear fusion, Meyerson said.

“We work backwards from an aspirational vision and that vision is a fleet of five harvesters that are machines that will excavate, sort, extract and separate the helium-3 from the lunar regolith and produce tens of kilograms of helium-3 per year,” he said.

“It’s challenging and dependent on private financing. It’s also dependent on a lot of other companies.”

Meyerson said Interlune’s quest to become the first company to commercialize natural resources from space is contingent upon continued progress at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which recently unveiled the latest design of its super heavy-lift launch vehicle, Starship, ahead of preflight testing. Musk has said he hopes to utilize the spacecraft for uncrewed missions to Mars as soon as next year.