A stealthy startup led by former Blue Origin leaders that is focused on harvesting resources from the moon has quietly closed a large new tranche of funding, according to… Regulatory documents.
Interlune, a startup that has been around for at least three years but has made almost no public announcements about its technology, has raised $15.5 million in new funding and aims to close another $2 million. A representative for Interlune declined to comment for this story.
This is the first public indication that the company has closed any financing since a $1.85 million seed round in 2022.
Much of what is known about the startup has been reported by GeekWire last October, when Interlune CTO Gary Lai described the startup succinctly during a speech at the Museum of Flight in Seattle: “We aim to be the first company to harvest natural resources from the moon for use here on Earth,” he said. “We are building a completely new approach to extracting those resources efficiently, cost-effectively and responsibly as well. The goal is to create a sustainable economy in space.”
Lai is an aerospace engineer whose resume includes 20 years at Blue Origin, where he eventually became the lead engineer for space transportation systems, including launch pads and lunar landers. Interlune is led by Rob Meyerson, an aviation executive who has been president of Blue Origin for 15 years. Merson is also a prolific angel investor, with investments in well-known hardware startups including Axiom Space, Starfish Space, Hermeus, and Hadrian Automation.
The SEC filing also lists attorney H. Indra Hornsby as CEO of the company. Hornsby previously served as general counsel at BlackSky and Spaceflight Industries, and also served as executive vice president at Rocket Lab.
What little else is known about Interlune’s technology comes from a small SBIR summary the startup obtained last year from the National Science Foundation. Under this award, the company said it aims to “develop a key enabling technology for in situ use of lunar resources: the ability to sort ‘lunar dirt’ (lunar regolith) by particle size.”
“By enabling raw lunar regolith to be sorted into multiple streams by particle size, the technology will provide feedstocks suitable for lunar oxygen extraction systems, lunar 3D printers, and other applications.” The summary says.
A growing number of space startups are focusing on what is known as in situ resource utilization (ISRU), or collecting and converting space resources into valuable commodities. Much of this is due to NASA’s stated priority of building a long-term human outpost on the Moon through its Artemis program: the agency acknowledges that long-term residence in space will require the ability to generate materials locally — whether that be to build roads, produce breathable air or… Even making rocket fuel.
But it’s not just startups trying to commercialize ISRU technology; Last year, Blue Origin announced it had made solar cells and transmission wires from a material chemically identical to lunar regolith.
in it February 2023 announcement regarding technology“Learning how to live off Earth — on the Moon and on Mars — will require extensive collaboration across the ISRU community,” Blue Origin said. This phrase was echoed in the Interlune summary: “Utilizing the Moon’s resources is a disruptive capability that will enable missions there to ‘live off Earth,’ making the development of this technology important for government agencies and industry alike.”