Secretive moon startup led by former Blue Origin leader raises new round of funding

A secretive startup led by a former Blue Origin leader focused on harvesting resources from the moon has reportedly quietly closed a sizable new round of financing. Normative documents.

between months, a startup that has been around for at least three years but has made almost zero public statements about its technology, has raised $15.5 million in new funding and plans to raise another $2 million. A representative for Interlune declined to comment for this story.

This is the first time the company has publicly stated that it has completed financing since its $1.85 million seed round in 2022.

Most of what is known about the startup is provided by GeekWire last October, Interlune Chief Technology Officer Gary Lai briefly described the startup during a speech at the Museum of Flight in Seattle: “Our goal is to be the first company to harvest natural resources from the moon and use them on Earth,” according to reports. he said. “We are building a completely new way to extract these resources efficiently, economically and responsibly. Our goal is actually to create a sustainable space economy.”

Lai is an aerospace engineer who worked at Blue Origin for 20 years, eventually becoming chief architect of the space transportation system, including launchers and lunar landers. Interlune is led by aerospace executive Rob Meyerson, who served as president of Blue Origin for 15 years. Meyerson is also a prolific angel investor, having invested in well-known hardware startups such as Axiom Space, Starfish Space, Hermeus and Hadrian Automation.

Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also list attorney H. Indra Hornsby as a company executive. Hornsby previously served as general counsel for BlackSky and Spaceflight Industries, and as executive vice president of Rocket Lab.

Little else is known about Interlune’s technology, coming from an abstract from a small SBIR the startup received last year from the National Science Foundation. The company said that under the award, its goal is to “develop a core enabling technology for in-situ resource utilization on the Moon: the ability to classify ‘lunar dirt’ (lunar regolith) by particle size.”

“By sorting raw lunar regolith into multiple streams by particle size, this technology will provide appropriate feedstock for lunar oxygen extraction systems, lunar 3D printers, and other applications.” summary says.

A growing number of space startups are focusing on so-called in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), which is collecting space resources and converting them into valuable commodities. This is driven in large part by NASA’s stated priority of establishing a long-term human outpost on the moon through its Artemis program: the agency acknowledges that long-term stays in space will require the ability to Produce materials locally – whether it’s building roads, producing breathable air, or even making rocket propellant.

But it’s not just startups trying to commercialize ISRU technology; Last year, Blue Origin announced that it had built solar cells and transmission lines from materials with the same chemical properties as lunar regolith.

In its February 2023 Technical BulletinBlue Origin says, “Learning to live on land on the Moon and Mars will require extensive collaboration across the entire ISRU community.” This statement is echoed in Interlune’s abstract: “The utilization of lunar resources is a disruptive capability that will Enabling missions there to be ‘land-survivable’ makes the development of this technology important to both government agencies and industry.”

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