A stealthy space resources company called Interlune has slowly come out of the shadows with ambitious plans to extract and sell a rare helium isotope found on the Moon. Headed by ex-Blue Origin executives including former chairman Rob Meyerson, Interlune has raised over $17 million to date from undisclosed investors.

While details remain scarce, TechCrunch obtained presentations showing the startup intends to harvest helium-3, valued for applications in medicine, quantum computing, fusion energy, and more. Interlune believes annual demand for the scarce isotope will reach 4,000 kg by 2040, compared to just 5 kg today.

“We want to be the first company to extract natural resources on the moon for use here on Earth,” stated Interlune's chief architect Gary Lai during a recent speech. Lai previously designed launch vehicles at Blue Origin for two decades.

Interlune's website is still mostly placeholder text, but documents show plans to test technologies in space by 2026, followed by initial lunar missions in 2028 and mining operations in the 2030s. Preliminary economic models estimate $500 million in annual revenue by that time.

The notion of mining helium-3 on the Moon has circled for years since Apollo astronauts discovered traces embedded within lunar rock samples. But finding an affordable way to extract, store, transport, and sell the material has proved an elusive challenge.

Interlune believes the economics can work this decade with sufficient investment and innovation. But the technical obstacles are immense for such an ambitious endeavor by a still-unknown startup.

“The real challenge will be economic, and therefore technological,” an industry expert noted. “Finding a cost-effective way to extract, store, transport and sell this isotope is a task that can only be solved after adequate market demand justifies such activities.”

With Meyerson’s pedigree and apparently healthy early funding, Interlune now faces the tall task of pioneering an entirely new private space industry mining the Moon. The coming years will test whether the vision is within technological and commercial reach.