Moon’s Surface Becomes Target For Mining Company That Identified Nuclear Fuel

DETROIT – Companies are clamoring to extract highly valuable resources from the Moon, as Islamabad-based Centre for Aerospace & Security Studies research assistant Mustafa Bilal wrote in a new opinion piece for SpaceNews .

Case in point, Helsinki-based cryogenics company Bluefors signed an agreement with space commercialization startup Interlune last month, agreeing to purchase up to ten thousand liters of lunar helium-3 extracted from the Moon, a deal that it says could be worth $300 million.

Helium-3, a stable isotope of helium, is a highly sought-after resource, as it could fuel nuclear power reactors either on the Moon or back home, or help cool quantum computers. It’s extremely rare on Earth, but more common on the Moon, thanks to solar winds bombarding its unprotecte