Helium-mining firm Interlune has won a US$4.8 million Texas Space Commission (TSC) grant to develop specialised replica lunar soil for lunar exploration research and development in Texas.
Interlune will use the grant funds, along with internal investment, to create a Lunar Regolith Simulant Center of Excellence near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Simulating the lunar soil – known as regolith – is crucial to testing technology and equipment such as instruments, scoops, landers and rovers, being developed by myriad companies and government agencies.
“Lunar regolith is different from dirt here on Earth, so a highest-fidelity testing environment on Earth is of tremendous value to Interlune and the entire lunar exploration community,” said Rob Meyerson, Interlune cofounder and CEO. “This support from the Texas Space Commission to develop novel lunar regolith simulants will create a massive U.S. advantage in space innovation.”
Interlune chief scientist, Dr. Elizabeth Frank, will lead the work, supported by a Texas-based team. Aside from offering replica soil to third parties, including companies, institutions and government organisations, Interlune plans to use the regolith simulants to create precise testing environments for its proprietary system to harvest natural resources from space.
Interlune’s own mining aspirations focus on helium-3, an isotope of helium which is extremely scarce on Earth but abundant on the Moon. The isotope is used in applications such as weapons detection in national security, medical imaging, and developing clean fusion energy. The strongest current demand is from the quantum computing industry, which uses dilution refrigerators to cool superconducting quantum computers to the near-absolute zero temperatures needed to operate.
The Interlune harvesting system includes novel technologies for excavating, sorting, extracting, and separating industrial quantities of helium-3 and other resources from lunar regolith. Its harvester, the firm says, is smaller, lighter, and requires less power than other industry concepts, making it less expensive to transport to the Moon and operate, Interlune claims, with several missions to the Moon planned this decade.
But with a value of around US$2,000 to US$40,000 per litre on Earth, depending on purity, the comparatively exhaustive cost of lunar helium-3 – potentially millions of dollars per gram initially – has raised doubts about the feasibility of lunar mining. Some sources estimate extracting helium-3 on the Moon, for example, requires processing massive volumes of regolith, with estimates suggesting 150-200 tonnes of lunar soil required to extract just 1 gramme of the isotope, all in the extreme conditions of the Moon.
Interlune has raised $18 million in venture capital seed funding and has binding contracts with buyers of helium-3 for delivery on Earth beginning in 2029. In addition to this grant from the Texas Space Commission, the company has received grants from the Department of Energy Isotope Program, NASA, and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award.
The Texan grant comes from TSC’s Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund (SEARF), which provides grants to businesses, non-profits, and governmental entities involved in space exploration research or aeronautics. The funds granted will support workforce development in Texas by expanding Interlune operations and creating additional infrastructure to strengthen the state’s aerospace economy. Interlune intends to provide internship opportunities once the centre has been established.
