Interlune Receives U.S. Department of Energy Grant to Increase Supply of Domestic Helium-3
Summary
Cooling Helium to extremely low temperatures is required to separate the Helium-3.The project aligns with the DOE Office of Isotope R&D and Productions mission to develop various isotope technologies to create robust domestic supply chains and reduce dependence on foreign supplies of isotopes.Recent growth in superconducting quantum computing development has spurred significant increases in demand for dilution refrigerators that use Helium-3 to reach the extremely cold millikelvin temperatures needed for qubit processing and error correction. Because the refrigeration systems capable of reaching millikelvin temperatures require Helium-3, the limited quantity currently available presents a bottleneck for future growth in quantum computing. This year, Interlune received a NASA TechFlights grant to advance its proprietary technology to process lunar soil and announced $18 million in seed funding. In 2023, the company received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award to develop technology to size and sort lunar regolith. Aiming to be the first U.S. company to commercialize resources from space, Interlune has developed patent-pending technology that extracts materials from the lunar soil, or regolith, using the smallest, most energy-efficient machinery ever conceived.