Interlune is building on a partnership with a mission company to build a lunar infrastructure base

Seattle-based Interlune is expanding its partnership with Vermeer, an Iowa-based industrial equipment manufacturer, to create construction tools for use on the moon.

The two companies formed their first strategic partnership to advance Interlune’s plans to extract helium-3 from tons of lunar dirt and rocks, also known as regolith. Their full-scale lunar excavator prototype was unveiled a little over a year ago.

At the time, Interlune was focused on mining helium-3 and bringing it back to Earth for uses ranging from quantum computing to medical imaging and nuclear fusion. But the big change came in March when NASA announced a 10-year, $30 billion plan to build infrastructure for a lunar base.

Interlune founder and CEO Rob Meyerson said he and his colleagues realized that working with Vermeer could support NASA’s plans. “We went back to Vermeer … and decided it made sense to formally expand the partnership to focus on all these other things we had going on,” Meyerson told GeekWire.

For example, a lunar construction project would likely involve building roads, compound areas, digging underground utility tunnels and moving rocks to clear the habitat. Heavy equipment may be needed to build protective shields around nuclear reactors.

President and CEO of Vermeer, Jason Andringa, said he is ready for the challenge. He mentioned that before running the business that his grandfather founded almost 80 years ago, he was a staff engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“When I left NASA and worked for Vermeer, my hope was always to be able to reconnect with my passion for aerospace, especially human exploration and the human collection of the moon and Mars, by returning to my family business…

Interlune is already working with the Colorado School of Mines on the development of a tool that could be used to dig trenches or excavate lunar soil, under the terms of a $150,000 NASA contract awarded earlier this year. Meyerson said the Vermeer collaboration will take such projects to the next level.

“We want to formalize the partnership so we can start thinking beyond prototypes, and think about sustainable jobs, sustainable systems,” he said. “That’s what Interlune and Vermeer put together as a team.”

Interlune will work with Vermeer to build a display instrument that could be mounted on a lunar rover and sent to the moon in 2028 or 2029. “It’s going to be something about leveling, rock removal and consolidation,” Meyerson said. “That will be the first priority.”

This timeline aligns with NASA’s plans to send Lunar Space Vehicles, or LTVs, to the moon for the Artemis 5 mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in late 2028.

Andringa said Vermeer will follow Interlune’s lead on the requirements for the lunar surface preparation tool. “It is more likely to involve what we call surface mining, where a large drum is attached to a machine that removes the top layer of the regolith, and then it can be consolidated,” he said. “Depending on the exact location on the moon and the exact properties of the material, you may only need to go through the drum in one go.”

Over time, Interlune and Vermeer will add to the toolkit. “At some point in the future, you may have a target machine put together by two companies, designed specifically for that industrial operation, instead of the machines that NASA is thinking about for LTV,” Meyerson said.

Currently, Interlune is still working on its helium-3 mining invention. The company’s first space mission, known as Crescent Moon, involves sending a multi-objective camera to the lunar surface later this year. The camera is designed to measure how much helium-3 is present in the soil around the landing site.

Interlune’s second mission, Prospect Moon, recently received $6.9 million from NASA in design and development funding. That mission is currently slated for launch in 2028 and will test ways to extract helium-3 and hydrogen from lunar regolith.

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“We have a team in place, and things are going well,” Meyerson said. “We are looking at all our important steps with the NASA team.”

Meanwhile, Vermeer is pursuing a separate partnership with Texas-based Astroport Space Technologies, which is developing its own robotic systems for lunar construction projects. “Interlune and Astroport know each other, and they both feel like there’s going to be a lot of work to do,” Andringa said.

Andringa emphasized that the work on the lunar construction machines was only a small percentage of what Vermeer did. About 10 of Vermeer’s 4,500 employees work on lunar projects, and even those employees have other projects in their portfolios, he said.

Still, Andringa admitted there’s something encouraging about expanding the company’s reach beyond Earth. “It will always be a small part of Vermeer, but it will be a very interesting, inspiring, exciting, stimulating, challenging part of Vermeer,” he said. “And you know what? What we learn to build things and fly and use things on the moon will only make us better at the workplaces where the Vermeer machines work on Earth. That’s why we do it.”