US-based startup Interlune is developing a lunar soil processing system to extract helium-3, a rare isotope on Earth believed to be more abundant in the Moon’s regolith, which is essentially a blanket of dust and broken rocks on the lunar surface.
The company is working with industrial equipment manufacturer Vermeer to create what is likely to be a prototype system, which will process up to 100 tonnes of lunar regolith per hour before separating the gases and isolating helium-3.
The system is expected to excavate the top few metres of regolith, after which the material will be sorted and heated to 700 to 900°C to release the embedded gases. These are then separated using cryogenic or pressure-swing adsorption techniques to isolate helium-3.
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