A Space Startup’s Moon Mining Plans Get a Boost With NASA Grant

A startup that aims to harvest a valuable gas from the moon’s surface and bring it back to Earth by the end of the decade has scored a NASA grant to push its plan forward.

The startup, Seattle-based Interlune, said it will use the $348,000 NASA grant to test a critical part of its technology that it will ultimately use to prepare lunar soil, known as regolith, for the extraction of helium-3, an isotope scarce on Earth but abundant on the moon. In an interview, Rob Meyerson, Interlune’s CEO and co-founder, said the grant will fund tests of prototypes of its equipment on plane flights that simulate the moon’s gravity and the vacuum of space.