At Lancaster University, some of the most expensive things they own aren't found in a museum, but inside beer kegs. These metal containers are filled with helium-3, a rare gas that costs around $2,000 a litre. While the university bought its supply cheaply decades ago, the world is now facing a shortage.
Helium-3 is essential for quantum computing and could eventually power nuclear fusion reactors to provide clean energy. Currently, most of our helium-3 comes from the decay of materials in nuclear weapons. However, as demand grows, researchers and businesses are looking elsewhere.
One surprising destination is the moon. Analysis of moon dust, properly called regolith, from old space missions suggests that the lunar surface contains significant amounts of the gas. This discovery has sparked a new space race.
Seattle-based company Interlune is planning to lead the charge. Their team includes Harrison Schmitt, an astronaut who actually walked on the moon in the 1970s. Interlune's goals are ambitious.
They want to send autonomous mining machines to the moon by 2027. These robots will scoop up tons of regolith, heat it to extract the gas, and bring it back to Earth. Not everyone is convinced that lunar mining is the best path.
Critics point out that we don't know exactly where the hotspots for helium-3 are on the moon. Furthermore, we might have to process hundreds of thousands of tons of dust just to get one kilogram of the gas. This would be a massive engineering challenge.
Because of these hurdles, some companies are sticking to Earth. For example, Pulsar Helium is investigating a site in Minnesota. They believe extracting the gas from the ground here is much more practical than going to space.
Despite the doubts, the industry is already worth millions. A Finnish quantum computing firm has already agreed to a $300 million deal to buy lunar helium-3 in the future. Whether it comes from our own soil or the lunar surface, this tiny atom is becoming a big part of the global economy.