Nearly a decade ago, the United States 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.
Earlier this year, two commercial spacecraft attempted to land on the moon as part of a NASA program designed to carry instruments and experiments to the lunar surface, and eventually cargo and rovers., by Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company, suffered a fuel leak and never made it to the moon. The second, by Houston-based Intuitive machines,on the moon, but came in too fast and tipped over.
Meyerson says 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 says.NASA might want to be a customer as well.
If that goes as planned, the company hopes to launch another mission in 2028 that would be an “end-to-end demonstration of the entire operation”, Lai says. That would entail flying a harvester to the moon, which would scoop up the regolith, then its processor would separate out the Helium-3. A small quantity would return to and be put “into the hands of the customer”. By 2030, the company intends to conduct full-scale operations.
Interlune has developed an extraction technology that is small, light and doesn’t require an enormous amount of power, he says, making it easier to transport to the moon and operate there.The company is also betting that as more commercial space ventures begin flying to the moon in partnership with NASA, deliveries to and from the surface will become more common, the way SpaceX now flies crew and cargo to the International Space Station in low earth orbit.
That’s in large part, he says, because of companies like SpaceX, which is flying its reusable Falcon 9 rocket at an unprecedented rate and is working on its next-generation Starship rocket, which NASA intends to use to carry astronauts to the moon.