Seattle-based Interlune has received a $348,000 grant from NASA to test its system for processing lunar soil on a series of reduced-gravity airplane flights—marking one more small step toward harvesting helium-3 and other resources on the moon.
The project is one of 11 selected for funding through NASA’s TechFlights program, which supports space technology testing on suborbital rockets, rocket-powered landers or airplane-based platforms.
Interlune’s system is known as CRUMBLE—an acronym that stands for “Comminution of Regolith Using Milling for Beneficiation of Lunar Extract.” Basically, the system would break down lunar dirt and rock, or regolith, and make it easier to extract potentially valuable ingredients such as helium-3.
The TechFlights grant will fund parabolic flights provided by Zero Gravity Corp. to see which kinds of equipment would work best in the airless, reduced-gravity conditions present on the moon’s surface. Interlune would use simulated moon dirt to put prototypes for its CRUMBLE processor through their paces.
“We are writing a new playbook for how public-private partnerships can deliver world-changing innovation to benefit all,” Interlune co-founder and CEO Rob Meyerson said today in a news release. “This award is one more step toward our goal of rebuilding the entire U.S. industrial base for lunar exploration.”
Interlune expects to complete the parabolic flights by the end of the year.
Eventually, Interlune aims to put its moondirt-processing system on rovers to harvest resources from the moon’s surface—much as combines harvest grain from earthly fields. Such resources could help sustain settlements on the moon or get shipped back to Earth.
Meyerson and his Interlune teammates point to helium-3 as the resource most likely to be worth extracting. That particular isotope of helium is more plentiful on the moon’s surface than it is on Earth, and it can be used for applications including quantum computing, medical imaging, nuclear material detection and fusion power.
Interlune is betting that lunar helium-3 will become cheaper than the helium-3 extracted on Earth, which the company says currently costs $20 million per kilogram. (Other cost estimates vary widely.)
Meyerson is the former president of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. Another one of Interlune’s co-founders, Gary Lai, previously served as Blue Origin’s chief architect. Yet another co-founder is Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, served a term as a U.S. senator and is a longtime proponent of lunar helium-3 mining.
Interlune says it’s raised $18 million in seed funding, and in an email to GeekWire, the company confirmed that it’s planning a Series A funding round during the first half of 2025. In addition to the investments and the NASA award, Interlune has received a $246,000 award from the National Science Foundation to work on a moondirt-sorting system.
