The goal of a young startup named Interlune is to mine the moon’s natural resources and resell them on Earth as the first commercial enterprise. Helium-3, an isotope of helium produced by the sun through fusion, will be the primary focus of Interlune at first because it is abundant on the moon. Rob Meyerson, a founding member of Interlune and a former president of Blue Origin, stated in an interview with Ars Technica that the business intends to use its harvester on one of the next NASA-sponsored commercial lunar missions. According to Meyerson, the goal is to construct a pilot plant on the moon by 2028 and start operations there by 2030.
Interlune announced this week that it’s raised $18 million in funding, including $15 million in its most recent round led by Seven Seven Six, the venture firm started by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The resource it’s targeting, helium-3, could be used on Earth for applications like quantum computing, medical imaging and, perhaps some day down the line, as fuel for fusion reactors. Helium-3 is carried to the moon by solar winds and is thought to remain on the surface trapped in the soil, whereas when it reaches Earth, it’s blocked by the magnetosphere.
Interlune aims to excavate huge amounts of the lunar soil (or regolith), process it and extract the helium-3 gas, which it would then ship back to Earth. Alongside its proprietary lunar harvester, Interlune is planning a robotic lander 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, “harvesting natural resources from the Moon 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 exec Indra Hornsby and James Antifaev, who worked for Alphabet’s high-altitude balloon project, Loon.
