Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
NASA is advancing technologies to extract resources such as hydrogen and helium-3 from lunar regolith, supporting propulsion, energy, and life support systems for long-duration Moon and Mars missions. This approach, called in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), uses on-site materials to increase mission sustainability.
To develop and validate resource-prospecting instruments, NASA awarded a firm-fixed-price contract worth $6.9 million over approximately 18 months to Interlune, a Seattle-based company specializing in extraterrestrial resource development. The contract is funded through a Phase III NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to transition technology for NASA missions and commercial use.
Interlune will design, build, and test engineering units and flight hardware capable of collecting lunar soil samples, sorting particles by size, extracting volatiles implanted by the solar wind, and quantifying those gases. Central to the instrument design is a mass spectrometer based on NASA’s Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO) technology, demonstrated during the Intuitive Machines 2 lunar South Pole mission in 2025.
MSOLO, developed by NASA’s Game Changing Development program at Kennedy Space Center, is a compact device engineered to analyze the chemical composition of lunar landing sites. Adapting proven MSOLO hardware for commercial use exemplifies NASA's goal to mature transformative technologies for broader adoption, according to Michael Johansen, Deputy Program Manager.
This contract aims to make future lunar operations more self-sufficient by enabling in-situ resource analysis and extraction, potentially reducing the mass and cost of supplies launched from Earth.