Interlune focuses on helium-3 excavator development and lunar construction projects

Interlune is using a $150,000 NASA contract to develop lunar trenching and drilling technology — and while the primary goal is to extract valuable helium-3 from lunar pollution, the project also shows the company’s broader play with lunar infrastructure.

Interlune’s work on a Phase 1 Small Business Technology Transfer contract, done in partnership with the Colorado School of Mines, shows that the Seattle-based startup’s business model is not limited to helium-3. In the coming years, the technology pioneered by Interlune to extract resources could also be used to build roads, base camps and other construction projects on the moon.

For example, the excavator that is the focus of NASA funding — known as the Scalable Implement for Lunar Trenching, or SILT — will support Interlune’s plan to sift through tons of lunar soil. But it will also support NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable lunar presence by the 2030s.

“We’re looking at other tools that will move regolith, or prepare a road site or build a radiation berm, bury a piece of infrastructure like a nuclear reactor,” Interlune CEO Rob Meyerson told GeekWire. “So, we’re very interested in participating in the Artemis program in a broader way, and we think the technology we’re developing to extract helium-3 can support that.”

Lunar helium-3 extraction tops Interlune’s list of priorities because Meyerson and the company’s other founders believe that could be a very profitable business line.

Helium-3 can be used in quantum computers, medical imaging systems, nuclear weapons detectors and even in emerging fusion devices – but it is so rare on Earth that it sells for up to $20 million a kilogram. Interlune is betting it can make a profit by extracting helium-3 from the moon’s solar wind.

“In the US, we produce one kilogram of helium-3 a year from the decay of tritium, give or take,” Meyerson said. “On the moon, we aim to extract 10 kilograms of helium-3 per year from our first helium-3 harvesting mission in the 2030s. And if we had helium-3 fusion, we would need 100 kilograms of helium-3 to power a city the size of Seattle for one year.”

The excavator development project builds on work Interlune has done in partnership with Vermeer Corp., an Iowa-based industrial equipment manufacturer. Last year, the two companies unveiled a complete prototype of an excavator that would be able to haul 100 metric tons of dirt per hour.

Under the terms of the NASA contract, Interlune and the Colorado School of Mines will focus on optimizing the design of the lunar surface excavator and reducing its energy consumption. Work on the current phase of the project will wrap up in mid-2026, and if the results are good enough, Interlune could get approval for follow-up funding.

Meyerson cited other areas where Interlune’s work on the underlying technology for its lunar harvesting system is attracting government support:

• The Texas Space Commission has awarded up to $4.8 million in funding to support a facility in Houston focused on creating better alternatives to lunar rocks and soil. “The first one will be a regolith simulator with solar wind in it. … We’re also working on a device that will inject helium and/or hydrogen into the regolith,” Meyerson said.
• The Air Force Department’s AFWERX program awarded Interlune a $1.25 million contract to work on a new method of separating helium-3 from domestic helium for use in cooling quantum computers. “We’re working closely with the Air Force Research Lab, and we’re working with an industrial gas partner that we haven’t announced yet,” Meyerson said. “We’ve been connecting to their helium plant and extracting helium-3, so that’s a very important project for us.”
• NASA’s TechFlights program has been awarded $348,000 to support reduced gravity testing of the Interlune regolith processing system.
• Interlune won a $246,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to work on its soil filtration technology.

Interlune was founded in 2020 by Meyerson, former president of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, and other space veterans including Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt. The team has grown to about 25 employees in Seattle, Houston and Washington, DC

To date the company has raised $18 million in seed funding, and recently reported that it is raising additional capital through a Simple Future Equity Agreement, or SAFE. “We chose to do this because we wanted to raise more money in anticipation of some of these contract awards, like the one we’re talking about today. And we have other announcements to come,” said Meyerson.

A multi-color camera developed by Interlune in collaboration with NASA’s Ames Research Center may begin probing the atmosphere of the helium-3 moon as early as this summer. Interlune says it already has more than half a billion dollars in purchase orders and government contracts for helium-3.

Meyerson said helium-3 would be “a great first product” for Interlune.

“But once we’re established on the moon, and we have all this infrastructure on the moon — drilling and filtering and extraction and separation — then we can start to flex and add the ability to produce water and split that into liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen,” he said. “We can extract metals, rare earths and silicon, and help with construction and mining, like we’re doing under this NASA contract. Those are all important services that are close at hand to help build the space economy. And we think that’s going to be huge.”