We simply have our first look at a prototype for a new moon mining machine.
“When you are operating equipment The moonThe standards of reliability and performance are at a new level, “said Rob Meyerson, co -founder and CEO of the Startup based in Seattle Interune. In a statement of May 7.
The machine is designed to produce 110 tons (100 metric tons) or lunar dirt, or regolito, per hour to harvest Helio-3A possible fuel source for future fusion reactors. Helium-3 is strange on earth, but it is abundant on the moon.
“The high rate excavation necessary to harvest helium-3 of the moon in large quantities had never tried to lose before, much less efficiently,” said Gary Lai, co-founder and director of Intelune technology, in the same statement.
The construction of the prototype promoted a unique association between Interune and Vermeer, a 70 -year -old agricultural and industrial team manufacturer. “We have been very satisfied with the results of the test program to date and we expect the next development phase,” Lai added.
Interune said that excavation is the first step in a four -step planned system to harvest natural resources of space: excavate, classify, extract and separate. The startup advanced with the construction of the large -scale prototype after successively testing a smaller version of the machine last year.
As a possible fuel source that changes the game that could be used in a variety of industries in the future, Helio-3, and obtain a hot topic from the Earth for years, and has bone American” Chineseand Japanese The efforts focused on the extraction of the rare isotope of Helio.
However, the cost of harvesting Helio-3 and then delivering it for use could make it expensive as a source of fuel in the immediate future, according to Ian Crawford, professor of planetarium at Birkbeck, University of London.
In 2021, Crawford told Space.com That “large amounts of investment and infrastructure necessary for mining, extraction and transport of lunar helium” means that the energy sources here Land It can be cheaper for a while.
Interune and Vermeer are part of a larger wave of companies and organizations that seek to help pave the way for future industries on the moon and its surroundings. For example, the United States Advanced Defense Research Projects (DARPA) presented its 10-year lunar architecture capacity study (Luna-10) in 2023 and 14 selected companies To provide ideas on how to develop a lunar economy.
