As the US and China’s race to return to the Moon accelerates, the private sector has also focused on the vast resource potential on our moon’s surface. In this context, lunar mining startup Interlune and Helsinki-based cryogenic technology company Bluefors have signed a critical $300 million agreement.

Lunar mining is coming

Under this agreement, Bluefors has agreed to purchase 10,000 liters of helium-3 isotope extracted from the lunar surface. This commercial agreement ushers in a new commercial era in lunar mining.

Helium-3 on the Moon, a stable isotope of helium, is attracting significant interest as a future energy source. It can be used both as fuel in fusion reactors and plays a critical role in cooling quantum computers. Helium-3, which is almost non-existent on Earth, is much more abundant on the Moon’s surface thanks to solar winds.

However, Interlune has yet to prove that extracting helium-3 from the lunar surface is economically viable. The company’s excavators may have to process millions of tons of lunar soil (regolith) to extract sufficient quantities of the isotope.

Furthermore, transporting such heavy equipment to the Moon would require astronomical costs. Therefore, the project is both technologically complex and financially risky.

Interlune is not alone in this goal. A vast ecosystem is emerging aimed at commercializing lunar resources. For example, Jeff Bezos’s company, Blue Origin, signed an agreement last month to map resources, including helium-3 and water ice, from lunar orbit, then verify them on the surface and make them available for in-situ use.

Experts point out that lunar water ice is at least as strategically important as helium-3. It can be converted into drinking water, oxygen, and rocket fuel, playing a vital role in establishing long-term human bases on the Moon.

All of these plans remain theoretical. Even if NASA’s envisioned lunar economy is realized, it would require years of development. Furthermore, the exact amount of helium-3 on the Moon is unknown, and the potential use of this isotope as an efficient energy source in fusion reactors has not yet been scientifically proven.

Nevertheless, Interlune is optimistic about the future. The company plans to measure the helium-3 concentration on the Moon’s surface next year using a multi-spectral camera that Astrobotic will send to the Moon aboard its Griffin-1 lander.