Is the Moon Value Mining?

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Since time immemorial, the moon has sparked one thing in humanity—love, longing, surprise, concern, and extra. Now we will add yet another human emotion to people who our luminous celestial neighbor coaxes from us: greed.

Astronomers have lengthy identified that the moon and its skinny outer layer of soil, known as regolith, incorporates a bevy of doubtless helpful assets. Now, firms are clamoring to say their little piece of the lunar pie within the hopes of changing moon mud into a gradual stream of revenue.

Most not too long ago, the most well liked commodity on the moon appears to be helium-3, a secure isotope of the noble gasoline that photo voltaic winds have deposited on the moon in portions that far exceed these discovered on Earth. Helium-3 might function gasoline for future nuclear fusion reactors and, extra instantly, as an important element of the high-tech fridges wanted to chill quantum computer systems.

Recently, Bluefors, a cryogenics firm based mostly in Finland, inked a $300 million take care of a moon useful resource harvesting startup known as Interlune to purchase as much as 265 gallons of helium-3 yearly between 2028 and 2037. On the heels of that deal, Blue Origin, the aerospace firm launched by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced its plan to intricately map the assets harbored by the moon, together with helium-3, water ice, and a bevy of uncommon earth parts and valuable metals. The moon can also be identified to be plentiful in lots of parts, particularly iron, oxygen, and silicon.

Read extra: “The Moon Is Full of Money”

But whereas firms and international locations jockey to mine the moon, making such ventures financially possible is one other matter altogether. “The new moon race will not be won by whatever nation plants boots and flags on the lunar surface,” wrote Mustafa Bilal, a analysis assistant at Islamabad-based Centre for Aerospace & Security, in a latest SpaceNews piece, “but by the one building the infrastructure to sustain a long-term presence and reaping the economic dividends.”

The factor is, it’s extremely costly to journey to the moon, particularly in spacecraft laden with the heavy-duty tools that might be wanted to extract assets, a lot much less ferry these spoils and machines again to Earth. One 2004 estimate held that it prices about $1,000 per pound for a spherical journey from Earth to the lunar floor. And that’s probably on the low aspect.

With know-how advancing at a breakneck tempo, the moon’s days as distant tugger of heartstrings are probably numbered. Let’s simply hope any extraction of its wealth leaves a bit one thing to proceed hitting our eye like an enormous pizza pie.

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Lead picture: NASA/JPL

• Bob Grant

  Posted on November 6, 2025

  Bob Grant is the deputy editor at Nautilus.