Lunar mining startup Interlune wants to start digging for helium-3 by 2030

A fledgling startup called Interlune is trying to become the first private company to mine the Moon’s natural resources and sell them back to Earth. Interlune will initially focus on helium-3 – an isotope of helium created by the Sun through the fusion process – which is abundant on the Moon. In an interview with Ars Technica, Rob Meyerson, one of the founders of Interlune and former president of Blue Origin, said the company hopes to fly its harvester with one of the next commercial missions to the Moon supported by NASA. The plan is to have a pilot plant on the Moon by 2028 and begin operations by 2030, Meyerson said.

Intermoon announced this week that it has raised $18 million in funding, including $15 million in its latest funding round led by Seven Seven Six, the venture capital firm launched by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The targeted resource, helium-3, could be used on Earth for applications such as quantum computing, medical imaging and, perhaps one day, as fuel for fusion reactors. Helium-3 is transported to the Moon by solar winds and would remain on the surface trapped in the ground, whereas when it reaches Earth it is blocked by the magnetosphere.

Interlune aims to mine huge quantities of lunar soil (or regolith), process it, and extract helium-3 gas, which it would then return to Earth. Alongside its proprietary lunar harvester, Interlune is planning a robotic landing mission to assess the concentration of helium-3 at the selected location on the surface.

“For the first time in history,” Meyerson said in a statement, “exploiting the Moon’s natural resources is technologically and economically feasible.” The founding team includes Meyerson and former Blue Origin chief architect Gary Lai, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, former Rocket Lab director Indra Hornsby and James Antifaev, who worked on the project high altitude balloon from Alphabet, Loon.