In a calm environment, five autonomous robots are drilling into the moon, digging up loose rock and dust and leaving lines of parallel tracks.
Stopping only to charge at a central solar power station, the car-sized machines process lunar debris internally to extract a form of helium so rare on Earth that the palm-sized container is estimated to contain millions. Once processed, the critical device is loaded into the device and sent back to Earth.
The vision is born of science fiction, but there are several companies that are already raising money to mine the Earth’s neighbor for resources, in the race to be the first to benefit from the economy of the first month.
“My view is that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” says Rob Meyerson, founder of Seattle-based company Interlune, one of the few 21st-century lunar explorers.
Meyerson worked on the space program but left Nasa to help Jeff Bezos turn his space company, Blue Origin, from a small experiment into a major aerospace player. His next ambition, however, is 385,000 kilometers away, and he has raised $18m from investors.
The moon has very scarce resources, and Meyerson is focusing on Helium-3, a gas made in the sun that is only abundant on Earth. Deposited on the moon over billions of years by the solar wind, it is used in medical imaging but has properties that could be important in quantum computers and, it is thought, even nuclear fusion.
As the demand for Helium-3 grows, Meyerson says, the available supply is very limited. “It’s a product that’s expensive enough to warrant going into space and bringing it back to Earth,” he says.
After 50 years without a single human visitor, the moon is back to normal, with NASA leading the charge for a flyby this week. The Artemis mission is the first to send astronauts back since 1972 and is part of a series of missions that the US agency believes will result in a permanent human presence, including a lunar base. However, China is still expected to reach the moon this decade.
And with private companies rather than governments continuing to work in the satellite business, deep space exploration is being revived, bringing new capabilities not seen since the days of the Apollo program.
Commercial operation of lunar mining would not have been possible ten years ago, but the explosive growth of private access to space through companies such as Blue Origin or its competitor SpaceX has made Off-Earth business possible.
Several international missions are expected to touch the moon in the next few years, and Interlune is not the only company investigating Helium-3. ispace, a Japanese-headquartered robotics company, has partnered with a US-based firm called Magna Petra, which it says is developing “AI-based” and “non-destructive recovery, using Helium-3 energy from the moon”.
“We’re betting that the cost of landing on the moon will come down,” says Meyerson.
He partnered with 90-year-old astrophysicist Harrison Schmitt, who serves as chairman of the board. The only geologist to walk on the moon, as part of the last mission of the US crew, Apollo 17 of 1972, Schmitt has been advocating lunar helium mining since the 1980s.
Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the space resources center at the Colorado School of Mines, says the key to being able to mine Helium-3 will be whether the moon has a high enough concentration of the element.
The professor gives the analogy of “gold in the ocean” – the ocean is full of millions of tons of tiny gold specks floating around but no company is trying to extract it. Why? “It is at a very low level, so the cost of extracting it is not comparable to the price of gold,” said Abbud-Madrid.
That’s why Interlune is sending a multi-view camera to the south side of the moon in a probe later this year, to measure not only the amount but also the levels of Helium-3.
‘A thing to be praised’
But this new pioneering spirit in landing instruments on the moon raises questions about whether it is the right thing to do. Critics argue that history is full of pioneers who rushed to unknown frontiers, only to realize too late that they had caused irreparable damage to an environment they did not fully understand.
Abbud-Madrid says that when he first studied mining in the area 25 years ago there was great excitement, but now there are increasing questions about the environmental impact.
“The moon has been worshiped for thousands of years,” he said. “You can go to an asteroid and destroy it, do whatever you want – it’s just one in a million. But the moon, you see every night… Is that right? It’s a valid question that’s been asked lately, and it has to be addressed at some point.”
Interlune does not use the word mining, which has destructive connotations, but instead says it is thinking about “harvesting”, which it says will “open up unprecedented growth and new ways for the development of the Earth and mankind”.
These words are deliberately made amid the growing concern that mankind can destroy the pristine environment. Astronomers have also warned that the mining operation will affect the future prospect of conducting important science from the lunar surface, which is very cold and isolated, and is therefore seen as a prime location for sensitive equipment.
Scientists have requested the protection of certain areas, known as areas of extraordinary scientific importance, including areas on poles and radio silence, which may be suitable for deep space observatories.
Martin Elvis, an astronomer at Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, said: “We’re not asking to set aside half a moon or some large area in the boundaries of commercial or exploratory activities. We’re asking for a few fields on the moon.”
Speaking at an astronomy conference last year, he warned that “irregular key areas are known to be a major cause of conflict and conflict” and there was an urgent and unanswered question about how these areas are properly protected.
Among these concerns is the legal aspect of lunar mining – the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is clear that no country can claim to have a celestial body like the moon, but it does not mention commercial activities.
Meyerson says there is room for businesses and scientists during the full moon. “It’s a big month,” he says, but adds that his team wants to work “in a thoughtful way that leaves room for reuse in the future.”
But Interlune is only one player in the global race to establish a presence on the moon. China’s Chang’e-6 mission successfully returned samples from the far side of the moon in 2024 that included Helium-3. State media reported the data from the mission will help Beijing estimate the total amount of Helium-3 on the moon, which it described as a “future energy source”.
In the coming decades, the moon is expected to be a bit of a power struggle here on Earth, with the world’s major powers – Russia, the US, and China – all having ambitious plans to return space exploration and humans to the moon.
“We’re looking at countries that maybe don’t think the same way as we do, like China, that are very active,” says Meyerson. “I think it’s important for the west and the US to be on the moon.”
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