Of Kasha Patel

We have not yet started mining on the moon, but companies are already buying their resources.

The Finnish BlueFors Technology Company, a refrigerator manufacturer that is vital to Quantum Informatics, bought tens of thousands of liters of sunglasses from the Moon – spending “over $ 300 million” – via a commercial space company called Interlune. The agreement, which has not been mentioned earlier, marks the largest market for natural resource.

Interlune, a company founded by former Blue Origin executives and an Apollo astronaut, has faced skepticism about its mission to become the first entity to extract the moon (which is legal thanks to a 2015 law granting US space companies). However, progress in harvesting technology and the implementation of trade agreements gradually make this venture look less like science fiction.

BlueFors is the third client to sign a contract, ordering up to 10,000 liters of sunglasses per year for delivery between 2028 and 2037.

The deal is “the strongest sign we can find that there is a demand for sun-3,” said Rob Meyerson, CEO of Interlune and former Blue Origin president. (Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

This is not a balloons sun. The sun-3 is lighter than the sun-4 used at birthday parties. It is also much rarer on earth. However, samples of lunar rocks since the Apollo era indicate his abundance there.

Interlune has estimated its market value in $ 20 million per kilo (about 7,500 liters).

“It is the only resource in the universe that is high enough to justify the mission in space today and its return to Earth,” Meyerson said.

Why quantum technology can require mum mining

The agreement with BlueFors comes before the long -awaited explosion of quantum computing technology, which could drastically improve the ability to solve some of the major problems of the universe. Advanced computers can help identify innovative approaches to treat diseases, discover habitable planets, produce better financial analyzes, or, more dangerously, violating access to sensitive information.

To understand the power of the computer, think of the following common experiment: a seller must travel to 22 cities, visit each city only once and return to the first city with the most effective route. It sounds simple, but a laptop would take about 1,000 years to find the best route. A quantum computer could one day calculate the solution in a few minutes, or maybe even in seconds.

These next -level machines are based on particles called Qubits to process information in new ways. But heat, even in small doses, can cause bugs in Qubits. There the sun enters.

BlueFors manufactures cooling technology that allows the computer to operate, producing chandeliers known as dilution refrigerators. Their refrigerators, used by IBM, a quantum leader, contain a mixture of sunglasses-3 and sun-4 that reduces the temperature below 10 Millikelvins (or-460 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The temperature in a BlueFors refrigerator is about 200 times lower than the space, which is really amazing,” said Ingela Waismaa, BlueFors’ marketing and communication director. “You have to reach 7 Millikelvin so that the Qubit can work in this environment.”

The quantum IT sector is in its early stages, said Gary Lai, co -founder and technology director of Interlune, who was previously an architect at Blue Origin.

Existing quantum computers have been manufactured with more than a thousand Qubits, he said, but a trading system or data center would need one million or more. This might even require thousands of liters of sun-3 per quantum computer.

“They will need more sun-3 than available on planet Earth,” Lai said. Most of the Sun-3 on Earth, he said, comes from the split of the tricos (a hydrogen isotope) in nuclear weapons reserves, but each year they are produced between 22,000 and 30,000 liters.

The Moon could fill this gap. As the sun emits a stream of charged particles in space, it has flooded the Moon with Sun-3 since its birth. (While the magnetic field of the Earth diverts much of the sun-3 from the sun).

“We estimate that there are more than a million metric tons of sun-3 on the Moon,” Meyerson said. “And it has been accumulating there for 4 billion years,” he added.

Now, all they need is to get it.

How will the sung-3 mining be done on the Moon

The planned mining or harvesting sun-3 on the Moon will include four basic stages.

First, Interlune will dig part of the lunar surface and separate the smaller particles from the larger one using centrifugal force. The company will then process the thin particles and release a mixture of gases trapped in bubbles on the outer surface.

The next step will include the separation of the sun-3 from the sun-4 and other gases for transport back to Earth. Once the process is completed, Interlune will return the excavated soil to the surface of the Moon, leaving an impression that looks more like cultivated land than with mining space.

The company has shown many stages of its harvesting technologies on Earth. He has worked with Vermeer Corporation, a manufacturer of industrial equipment in Iowa, to develop and test an original full -scale excavator. It can dig 100 metric tons of soil per hour and return it to the surface with a quick movement.

Interlune successfully sorted smaller particles in a simulated lunar atmosphere, which mimics the lower gravitational attraction of the Moon. Lai said that – perhaps for the first time on Earth – they also separated the sun -3 from his mixture with the sun -4.

The company mainly focuses on the moon mining technology, leaving the journey and transportation of its equipment there to other companies.

“This is really about creating a durable supply chain for this critical material,” Meyerson said. He said that recovery-3s for quantum computers is the immediate goal of the company, but could also see other uses for the element in the long run, including fusion energy.

Other analyzes have shown that the sunglasses collection is difficult, if not unrealistic. A 2022 report by the United States Geological Services classified the element as “hypothetical non -recoverable resource” at the time, with the possibility of such reserves in 30 years being “unknown”. Recovery can also require the excavation of a large volume of lunar soil to recover a few liters.

Interlune is aware of the challenges. Lai said the company would place a multi-spectral camera on a commercial vehicle that will travel to the Moon later this year, which will look for sunglasses-3 reserves.

Interlune has signed agreements on the sale of three liters of lunar sunglasses to the US Ministry of Energy Isotopes Program, which distributes sun-3 from US triuar reserves, in the first government market for natural resource from space. The Maybell Quantum Commercial Company has agreed to buy thousands of liters of sunglasses-3.

BlueFors’ most substantial commitment indicates a growing demand for the product in the near future, Lai said.

“Perhaps in three to five years, we will see quancs with quantum computers, and will be much larger than today,” said Waismaa of BlueFors. “That’s why we found that we need several sunglasses-3 suppliers.”