Is iSpace getting into the rare helium mining business?

One of the next private companies to attempt a moon landing in the new year will be the Japanese iSpace, due for a launch no earlier than January 2025. Its first attempt met with failure in April 2023. The January launch will take place on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in a ride-share with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander and will take several months to reach the moon.

The lander, dubbed the Resilience, will carry a micro rover called the Tenacious, to the lunar surface. The Tenacious will collect samples of the lunar regolith to be collected by NASA later in a manner to be determined.

Long term, iSpace made more significant news by announcing an agreement with a company called Magna Petra. Magna Petra has developed a technology to extract helium 3 from lunar soil that “promises energy efficient isotope extraction and collection with minimal impact to the lunar surface.” The announcement did not offer any specifics about the new technology.

Helium 3 is rare on Earth, primarily produced by the radioactive decay of tritium, but it does reside in abundance in the lunar regolith, deposited by billions of years of solar wind. The isotope has applications in “national security, medical imaging, quantum computing and nuclear fusion energy.” The last application has clean energy advocates particularly excited.

One of the great issues of our age revolves around energy. How do we generate enough of it to keep our technological civilization growing and thriving? How do we generate energy that does not harm the environment, such as greenhouse gasses emitted by fossil fuels that cause climate change?

Solar, wind, nuclear and even outfitting fossil fuel plants with carbon capture technology have their advocates. But the holy grail of clean, virtually limitless energy resides in fusion technology.

Nuclear fusion is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as the fusion of two light atomic nuclei to produce a heavier one plus a tremendous amount of energy. Fusion is the process that powers the Sun. Scientists have been attempting to replicate that process on Earth for decades. A number of publicly and privately funded efforts are ongoing to create fusion power plants.

Most nuclear fusion projects involve the fusing of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen that can be extracted from sea water, and tritium, also a hydrogen isotope. Difficulties include creating a fusion reaction that is stable, long lasting, and takes less energy to produce than it generates. Deuterium-tritium fusion also creates radioactive byproducts that have to be disposed of periodically.

Helium 3’s main advantage as a fusion fuel is that it creates little or no radioactive byproducts and thus a reactor using it is easier to maintain. The disadvantage is that it takes a higher temperature to create a sustained reaction.

However, a company called Helion Energy thinks it has solved that problem with a magnetic containment system. It intends to create helium 3 fuel using more conventional deuterium-tritium and deuterium-deuterium fusion.

The trick to creating a fusion energy economy using lunar helium 3 is to create a supply chain to mine the isotope and transport it from the moon to the Earth. Mining and transportation costs must somehow be cheaper than Helion’s Earth-based manufacturing process.

Small traces of helium 3 were found in the samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts, which is the reason we know about its presence to begin with. Recently, the Chinese found tiny amounts of the isotope in samples brought back by the Chang’e 5 mission. The amount needed to power the world would be measured in tons per year.

The SpaceX Starship Human Landing System may provide the key for developing an Earth-Moon economy. The Starship HLS would deliver astronauts and supplies to a growing lunar base. The same vehicle could deliver back to Earth, among other cargo, resources including helium 3 mined from the moon. Its 150-ton capacity could make it the perfect vehicle to create the first trade route between Earth and another world.

The first Apollo missions to the moon were motivated by political prestige with a little bit of science. Those motives still exist for the Artemis program, but economic development has become an increasing motive for the modern race to the moon.

Will the dream of fusion power fueled by helium 3 ever become reality? Maybe. Maybe not. 

But the iSpace-Magna Petra agreement to start returning that isotope to Earth could be a small, first step that could spark a giant leap for a fusion energy economy that could transform human civilization for the better.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.