Seattle-based Interlune has secured a $6.9 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract from NASA to build a system that can extract helium-3 and hydrogen from lunar regolith. The award positions the company to supply a growing market for lunar helium-3, which could power quantum computing and future fusion reactors.
The contract follows NASA's broader push to develop a lunar economy and the growing interest in helium-3 as a clean fusion fuel. Interlune's technology will be tested on Earth for 18 months before a 2028 launch on a commercial robotic lander.
The 18-month program will culminate in a 2028 launch on a commercial robotic lander. Interlune already has nearly $500 million in binding orders for helium-3 from quantum-computing firms and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of the Air Force, and it raised $18 million in seed capital in 2024, followed by a $5 million investment this January. The payload will include a robotic arm, a particle-sorting device, heating hardware, a multispectral camera to determine helium-3 concentrations, and a mass spectrometer to analyze gases.
Rob Meyerson, co-founder and CEO of Interlune, said the contract would help ensure America's leadership in building the lunar economy. Elizabeth Frank, Interlune's chief scientist, noted that the mission would be the first to measure volatile gases by heating regolith on the moon, advancing scientific understanding and informing power requirements for resource extraction. California-based Astrolab announced a partnership to integrate Interlune's extraction hardware onto future lunar rovers, with a demonstration mission scheduled for summer.
