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Watch this: $20 million/kg: a resource worth a trip to the moon
There’s a resource in lunar soil that’s so valuable that it could spark a 21st century gold rush. With a declared value of $20 million per kilogram, this material is about 150 times more valuable than gold due to its potential use in… Fusion power plantsCooling for Quantum computersIts current use is in detecting attempts to smuggle nuclear materials for national security purposes.
Seattle-based startup Interlune is one of a few space resource extraction companies aiming to harness these materials to create a lunar economy. It has designed a prototype to extract it from the moon’s surface and a plan to return it to Earth.
Interlune’s demonstration of its Helium-3 harvesting system.
NASA Artemis program Interlune is developing key infrastructure for returning to and staying on the Moon, creating an opportunity for companies like Interlune to bring their own technologies and business plans to the Moon’s surface.
The company has built a full-scale prototype excavator with the help of Vermeer, makers of industrial and agricultural machinery, which it is currently testing on the ground. But with the Moon’s low gravity, lack of atmosphere, and unique composition of the soil, there are many different factors at play that Interlune needs to optimize.
Prototype of Interlune’s lunar rig.
Interlune says it will also use a helium-3 extraction process to harvest helium-3 from Earth, but Earth’s supply of helium-3 is very limited. The primary way to increase Earth’s supply of helium-3 is through the decay of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used in applications such as nuclear reactors, fusion reactors, and weapons. Tritium itself is also very rare and expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars per gram.
On the other hand, the helium-3 found on the Moon was synthesized by the Sun and deposited on the Moon’s surface via solar wind over billions of years. Solar wind is a stream of charged particles emitted from the Sun that can cause damage to terrestrial technologies such as power grids, satellites, and communications networks. Earth’s magnetic field acts as a powerful shield against the solar wind that benefits us in many ways, but it’s also part of what makes helium-3 rare and valuable here on Earth.
Helium-3 deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2029, and Interlon already has offtake agreements with companies like Maybelle and BlueForce, which need helium-3 to build chandelier-like dilution refrigerators that cool quantum computers to near absolute zero so they can function.
This spacious heatsink is designed to house IBM’s quantum computers.
To see Interlune’s lunar rig prototype in action, watch the video in this article.