{"id":17124,"date":"2025-05-07T21:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T13:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/interlune-announces-deals-for-moon-mining-equipment-and-for-selling-lunar-helium-3\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T21:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T13:11:07","slug":"interlune-announces-deals-for-moon-mining-equipment-and-for-selling-lunar-helium-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/interlune-announces-deals-for-moon-mining-equipment-and-for-selling-lunar-helium-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Interlune announces deals for moon mining equipment \u2014 and for selling lunar helium-3"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An artist\u2019s conception shows a rocket with a capsule containing helium-3 heading back to Earth from the moon\u2019s surface. (Interlune Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seattle-based Interlune provided a triple-barreled update today on its progress toward mining helium-3 on the moon and returning that resource to Earth.<\/p>\n

The startup joined Vermeer Corp., an industrial equipment manufacturer headquartered in Iowa, to unveil a full-scale prototype of an excavator that\u2019s designed to ingest 100 metric tons of moon dirt in an hour. After the helium-3 is extracted, the machine would drop the rest of the dirt back onto the lunar surface in a continuous motion.<\/p>\n

Also today, Interlune announced separate agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy and Maybell Quantum Industries to start supplying lunar helium-3 by 2029.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose three different announcements go together,\u201d Interlune co-founder and CEO Rob Meyerson told GeekWire. \u201cIt\u2019s a really, really important step for our company in establishing what it is that we\u2019re doing, and who the customers are that want to buy what we\u2019re going to produce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helium-3 is an isotope that\u2019s much rarer than the helium-4 that you typically find in lighter-than-air balloons. Helium-3 has a wide range of high-tech applications in fields that include quantum computing, fusion power, medical imaging and weapons detection for national security purposes. <\/p>\n

The substance is hard to find on Earth, but it\u2019s more abundant on the moon due to bombardment by solar-wind particles. Interlune aims to take advantage of the potential market by extracting lunar helium-3 and shipping it back to Earth. The idea isn\u2019t exactly new; in fact, helium-3 mining was a key plot point in \u201cMoon,\u201d a 2009 sci-fi movie. But Interlune is the first venture to try commercializing such an operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,\u201d Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and chief technology officer, said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Lai served as chief architect for the New Shepard suborbital rocket ship built by Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture, and went to space on New Shepard in 2022. Meyerson\u2019s background includes another strong connection to Blue Origin: He served as the company\u2019s president from 2003 to 2018.<\/p>\n

Meyerson said Vermeer would be a key partner in the development of Interlune\u2019s autonomous harvesting system. \u201cWhen you\u2019re operating equipment on the moon, reliability and performance standards are at a new level,\u201d he said in the press release. \u201dVermeer has a legacy of innovation and excellence that started more than 75 years ago, which makes them the ideal partner for Interlune.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interlune and Vermeer tested a subscale version of the excavator last summer, setting the stage for the full-scale prototype unveiled today. Interlune said that the excavator is the first product resulting from the partnership, and that the companies will continue to explore other technologies for use in space and on Earth. For example, Interlune is working on methods for sorting, extracting and separating helium-3 from the dirt after it\u2019s excavated.<\/p>\n

Vermeer CEO Jason Andringa will join Interlune\u2019s advisory board to deepen the partnership. \u201cCombining my personal passion for aeronautics and astronautics with Vermeer equipment that bears my grandfather\u2019s name, to carefully and responsibly harvest resources to make our world a better place, is something I\u2019m incredibly proud of,\u201d Andringa said.<\/p>\n

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Interlune and Vermeer worked together to test a full-scale prototype of an excavator with auxiliary components. The final version of the excavator hardware will be integrated into a machine known as the Interlune Harvester. (Interlune \/ Vermeer Photo) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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An artist\u2019s conception shows the Interlune Harvester, which would incorporate excavation hardware that\u2019s currently being developed in partnership with Vermeer. (Interlune Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interlune said Maybell Quantum would be the startup\u2019s first commercial customer. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, Interlune would provide thousands of liters of helium-3 for yearly delivery between 2029 and 2035. The helium-3 would be used in Maybell\u2019s dilution refrigerators, which cool quantum computing devices to near absolute zero.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelium-3 will fuel a fundamental transformation in computing,\u201d Corban Tillemann-Dick, founder and CEO of Maybell Quantum, said in a news release. \u201cIn the coming years, we\u2019ll go from a few hundred quantum computers worldwide to thousands, then tens of thousands, and they all need to get cold. To get cold, they need dilution refrigeration running on helium-3.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interlune also said it planned to deliver three liters of lunar helium-3 to the U.S. Department of Energy by April 2029. Under the terms of that agreement, the helium-3 would be purchased \u201cat approximately today\u2019s commercial market price,\u201d the company said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Interlune has pegged the commercial price of helium-3 at $20 million per kilogram. The price per liter would be significantly lower, however. Last year, a market report from the Edelgas Group said helium-3 was trading at around $2,500 per liter. Meyerson said Interlune\u2019s calculations were based on a price of roughly $3,000 per liter, with roughly 7,400 liters in a kilogram under standard conditions. He also said Interlune will \u201cprobably return more than three liters\u201d for its first delivery. <\/p>\n

The agreement with the Department of Energy marks the first purchase of a non-terrestrial natural resource under the terms of the DOE Isotope Program, Interlune said. \u201cWith this agreement, the DOE IP is signaling to companies and investors that it supports novel approaches to securing critical materials for use on Earth, including space resources,\u201d Meyerson said.<\/p>\n

Last year, Interlune received a grant from the DOE Isotope Program to study a low-temperature method for separating helium-3 from domestic helium supplies, in partnership with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The company plans to leverage findings from that project to support its plans for lunar helium-3 extraction.<\/p>\n

Interlune, which was founded in 2020, has also received grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation to work on technologies for processing lunar soil. Last year, the company said it raised $18 million in seed funding. And last month, it won a grant of up to $4.84 million from the Texas Space Commission to open a center focusing on the processing of simulated moon dirt. <\/p>\n

In a video posted to LinkedIn, Nina Hooper, Interlune\u2019s director of business development, laid out the company\u2019s roadmap for testing its hardware on the moon. <\/p>\n

The plan calls for executing three missions over the next five years. \u201cOur first mission, Crescent Moon, is coming up at the end of this year, 2025,\u201d Hooper said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be sending a hyperspectral camera as a rideshare to the south pole with another lunar mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

That mission would be followed by Prospect Moon. \u201cWe\u2019ll be taking a lander to an area of our choosing where we believe the helium-3 concentration is highest,\u201d Hooper said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be taking an advanced suite of sensors and some technology demonstrations to validate the concentration of helium-3 and prove out our method of extracting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooper said the third mission, Harvest Moon, would be an end-to-end demonstration of the process for extracting helium-3 and sending it back to Earth. Meyerson said Interlune intends to bring back the helium-3 for the Department of Energy on that return trip.<\/p>\n

Some aspects of Interlune\u2019s mission plan still need to be resolved. For example, what kind of rocket would Interlune use to send back the processed helium-3? \u201cWe haven\u2019t decided yet whether we\u2019re going to make that, or whether we\u2019re going to buy that, but both options are on the table,\u201d Meyerson said.<\/p>\n

This report was updated on May 8 with comments from Meyerson.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An artist\u2019s conception shows a rocket with a capsule containing helium-3 heading back to Earth from the moon\u2019s surface. (Interlune Illustration) Seattle-based Interlune provided a triple-barreled update today on its progress toward mining helium-3 on the moon and returning that resource to Earth. The startup joined Vermeer Corp., an industrial equipment manufacturer headquartered in Iowa, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2132,4354,4339,4444,625,4445,4446],"class_list":["post-17124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-department-of-energy","tag-helium-3","tag-interlune","tag-maybell-quantum","tag-moon","tag-quantum-computing","tag-vermeer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}