Interlune's Moonshot: Unlocking the Moon's abundant resources to satisfy needs on Earth
I recently saw a fascinating series of videos on 𝕏 where Nina Hooper, Director of Business Development at Interlune, discusses the firm's plans to mine helium-3 on the Moon and bring it back for use on Earth.
According to Brave Leo, Interlune is headquartered in Seattle, WA, USA, and it launched in 2020. The firm, with its 22 employees, specializes in harvesting resources from space. With private and public partnerships, the firm is creating the infrastructure to access marketable commodities in space and bring them back to Earth.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find embeddable copies of the videos from YouTube, so here are the videos on 𝕏:
- #1 - What is helium-3 and WHY is it so important?
- #2 - Why do we need to go to the moon for helium-3?
- #3 - How MUCH helium-3 is out there?:
- #4 - Mission Plans
The videos are only two or three minutes, each, so go ahead and click through.
In the first video, Hooper tells us about helium-3. What is it, and why is it important?
We're all familiar with helium-4, which is used to fill "lighter than air" balloons. The helium-4 atom has two neutrons and two electrons, and it is relatively common in nature. In contrast, the helium-3 atom has only one neutron, and it is very rare in nature, making up just 0.0001% of naturally occurring helium on Earth. The different atomic makeup gives helium-3 a lower boiling point (3.19K), and the liquid form can get extremely close to absolute zero. It also means that the atom will easily adopt a 2nd neutron.
As a result of these properties, it is already useful for fields like medical imaging, quantum computing, and radioactive weapons detection. It is also potentially useful for future energy production technologies with nuclear fusion. We'll learn in a future video that its scarcity, combined with its utility means that it's tremendously valuable - currently priced at about $20 million per kilogram.
In the second video, Hooper tells us why the firm needs to go to the Moon for helium-3. As already mentioned, helium-3 is exceedingly scarce on Earth. Further, it can only be created in nuclear reactions that take place in certain types of nuclear reactors. On Earth, about 6 kg per year of helium-3 could be harvested from natural sources, which is not enough to meet demand. In addition to naturally occurring helium-3, nuclear plants on Earth produce another kilogram, but this is still nowhere near enough to meet demand.
The third video covers the economics of the mining operation. Why is helium-3 so exceedingly rare on Earth, but common on the Moon? It has to do with how it's created.
On Earth, or on the Moon, the ultimate source of naturally occurring helium-3 is the Sun. As with manmade helium-3 on Earth, the Moon's naturally occurring helium-3 is also produced in a nuclear reaction - on the Sun. After creation, the helium-3 is scattered into the solar system via solar winds. On Earth, much of the solar wind is blocked by the atmosphere, but there's no atmosphere to block it on the Moon. Thus, the substance has been accumulating on the Moon's surface for billions of years. Apollo 17 Astronaut Harrison Shmitt makes a cameo in the video to explain how NASA discovered its presence.
As a result of the different atmospheres, the Moon has collected 1.1 million metric tons of helium-3, whereas Earth has accumulated 1.6 tons. With market prices at $20 million per kilo and almost 1 million-fold difference in available supply, that's what makes the effort worthwhile. Over the decades, satellite mapping has identified the lunar regions where helium-3 appears to be most plentiful.
In the fourth video, Hooper describes the mission planning. Over the next five years, the company plans to run 3 missions to prove out the concept. The first mission, Crescent Moon runs at the end of 2025. The team plans to visit the Moon's south pole with a hyperspectral camera. The second mission, Prospect Moon, will go to an area where the firm believes that the concentration of helium-3 is highest. On this mission, they will use a suite of advanced censors to validate the helium-3 concentration and demonstrate the method of extracting it. The third mission, Harvest Moon, will perform a pilot demonstration of the end-to-end extraction process.
The firm plans to have their full infrastructure in place during the beginning of the 2030s, with five harvesters and all of the supporting infrastructure needed to support mining and delivery into Earth's marketplaces.
Stay tuned because Hooper promises to discuss the technical details in a future video. Here is Hooper's 𝕏 profile, and here is Interlune's.
As I noted before, I couldn't find these videos in an embeddable format, but while I was looking, I came across this 9-year-old TEDX talk that you may enjoy. In this video, Hooper was a Harvard undergrad delivering a presentation on the possibility of mining platinum from asteroids.
Thank you for your time and attention.
As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".
Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.
Pixabay license, source
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