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Tag: Harrison Schmitt

  • Former Blue Origin Employees Want to Harvest Helium-3 From the Moon

    Former Blue Origin Employees Want to Harvest Helium-3 From the Moon

    Over billions of years, the surface of the Moon has been bombarded by solar wind, carrying high-energy particles that include a highly coveted resource, helium-3. Although the element is scarce on Earth, it has recently become in demand by several industries, including those working on quantum computing and nuclear fusion reactors.

    Moon Knight Gives Us Hope

    Helium-3 has been deemed so precious that one company is willing to go all the way to the Moon to get it. Seattle-based startup Interlune recently announced that it raised $15 million in funding as part of its plan to harvest and sell natural resources from the Moon. The company wants to initially focus on harvesting helium-3, which it can sell to government and commercial customers in the national security, quantum computing, medical imaging, and fusion energy industries, according to Interlune.

    “There is growing demand for Helium-3 across burgeoning and potentially massive industries,” Alexis Ohanian, one of the main investors in Interlune’s latest round of funding, said in a statement. “We invested in Interlune because access to the ample cache of Helium-3 and other precious natural resources on the Moon and beyond will unlock or accelerate technological advancements currently hindered by lack of supply.”

    Interlune was founded in 2020 by former Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson and former Chief Architect Gary Lai, as well as Harrison Schmitt, the only living member of Apollo 17—NASA’s last crewed mission to the Moon. “For the first time in history, harvesting natural resources from the Moon is technologically and economically feasible,” Meyerson said in a statement.

    Sure it’s feasible, but the company still needs to develop a way to do it. The latest round of funding is a good start, but there’s still a long way to go. Interlune is working on the design of its first robotic lander mission, which will verify the helium-3 levels at the company’s chosen Moon site for its initial operation.

    Although it’s still in its initial phases, Interlune is hoping to launch a new era for the lunar economy, essentially becoming the first to harvest and sell natural resources extracted from the Moon. According to the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act, which was passed in 2015, any resource obtained in space is the property of the entity that extracted it.

    The idea of resource mining from the Moon and other celestial objects has been floating around for some time, but very few companies have made any substantial steps towards achieving it. NASA recently announced its own plans to explore harvesting resources from the Moon within the next 10 years to support its Artemis plans, hoping to establish large scale lunar regolith mining by 2032 and extracting resources such as water, iron, and rare metals.

    Space definitely has all the right stuff, but there’s still a lot of groundwork that needs to be done before we can start selling cosmic resources. Since there are no regulations set in place as of yet, there’s also an added risk of the race to extract as much resources as possible, altering the makeup of the Moon or other objects in space.

    For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X (formerly Twitter) and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.

    Passant Rabie

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  • NASA capsule flies over Apollo landing sites, heads home

    NASA capsule flies over Apollo landing sites, heads home

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Orion capsule and its test dummies swooped one last time around the moon Monday, flying over a couple Apollo landing sites before heading home.

    Orion will aim for a Pacific splashdown Sunday off San Diego, setting the stage for astronauts on the next flight in a couple years.

    The capsule passed within 80 miles (130 kilometers) of the far side of the moon, using the lunar gravity as a slingshot for the 237,000-mile (380,000-kilometer) ride back to Earth. It spent a week in a wide, sweeping lunar orbit.

    Once emerging from behind the moon and regaining communication with flight controllers in Houston, Orion beamed back photos of a close-up moon and a crescent Earth — Earthrise — in the distance.

    “Orion now has its sights set on home,” said Mission Control commentator Sandra Jones.

    The capsule also passed over the landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14. But at 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) up, it was too high to make out the descent stages of the lunar landers or anything else left behind by astronauts more than a half-century ago. During a similar flyover two weeks ago, it was too dark for pictures. This time, it was daylight.

    Deputy chief flight director Zebulon Scoville said nearby craters and other geologic features would be visible in any pictures, but little else.

    “It will be more of a tip of the hat and a historical nod to the past,” Scoville told reporters last week.

    The three-week test flight has exceeded expectations so far, according to officials. But the biggest challenge still lies ahead: hitting the atmosphere at more than 30 times the speed of sound and surviving the fiery reentry.

    Orion blasted off Nov. 16 on the debut flight of NASA’s most powerful rocket ever, the Space Launch System or SLS.

    The next flight — as early as 2024 — will attempt to carry four astronauts around the moon. The third mission, targeted for 2025, will feature the first lunar landing by astronauts since the Apollo moon program ended 50 years ago this month.

    Apollo 17 rocketed away Dec. 7, 1972, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, carrying Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ron Evans. Cernan and Schmitt spent three days on the lunar surface, the longest stay of the Apollo era, while Evans orbited the moon. Only Schmitt is still alive.

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    This story has been updated to show that NASA now estimates the flyover of Apollo sites was 1,200 miles above the moon, not 6,000 miles.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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