By 
May 7th, 2025
Image credit: Interlune
The visionary Interlune company, based in Seattle, Washington, announced today that the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program (DOE IP) has agreed to purchase three liters of helium-3 harvested from the Moon for delivery on Earth at approximately today’s commercial market price. The delivery date is no later than April 2029.
The agreement marks the first DOE Isotope Program purchase of a non-terrestrial natural resource.
Interlune will harvest the helium-3 from the lunar soil, or regolith, and return it to Earth for the DOE IP and other customers using the fully operational infrastructure of its pilot plant on the Moon’s surface.
Helium-3, a stable isotope of helium, is extremely scarce on Earth but is available in abundance on the Moon, explains Interlune.
Image credit: Interlune
Dilution refrigerators
Interlune also announced today its first commercial customer. Maybell Quantum, the quantum infrastructure company, has agreed to purchase thousands of liters of helium-3 for yearly delivery from 2029 to 2035. The helium-3 will be used in Maybell’s state-of-the-art dilution refrigerators, which cool quantum devices to near-absolute zero temperatures.
Harvesting system
The Interlune harvesting system includes novel technologies for excavating, sorting, extracting, and separating industrial quantities of helium-3 and other resources from lunar soil or regolith.
According to Interlune, the firm’s harvester is smaller, lighter, and requires less power than other industry concepts, making it less expensive to transport to the Moon and operate once it’s there.
Image credit: Interlune
In another announcement today, Interlune unveiled a full-scale prototype of an excavator for harvesting Helium-3 from the Moon. Working with industrial equipment manufacturer Vermeer Corporation, the hardware is designed to ingest 100 metric tons of Moon dirt, or regolith, per hour and return it to the surface in a continuous motion.
For more information about Interlune and its ambitions, go to my earlier SpaceNews story –Interlune plans to gather scarce lunar Helium-3 for quantum computing on Earth” — at:
Posted in Space News
