In the silent vacuum of space, five autonomous robots move across the lunar surface, digging up a loose layer of rock and dust and leaving even tracks in their wake.
Stopping only to recharge at a major solar power plant, the car-sized machines process the lunar soil internally to extract a type of helium so rare on Earth that a handful is worth millions. Once processed, the valuable resource is loaded onto a launch vehicle and sent back to Earth. This picture is born of science fiction, but several companies are already raising funds to mine resources from Earth's neighbor, in a race to be the first to capitalize on the nascent lunar economy, writes "The Guardian".
"My view is that it's not a question of if, it's a question of when", said Rob Myerson, who founded Seattle-based Interlune, one of several lunar prospectors of the 21st century.
Myerson worked on the space shuttle program, but left NASA to help Jeff Bezos turn his space company Blue Origin from a small experiment into a major player in the aerospace industry. His next ambition, however, is about 385,000 km away, and he has raised $18 million from investors.
The moon has resources that are extremely scarce, and Myerson is focusing on helium-3, a gas produced on the sun and present only in trace amounts on Earth. Deposited on the moon's surface over billions of years by the solar wind, it is used in medical imaging, but has properties that could be key to quantum computers and, theoretically, nuclear fusion.
Demand for helium-3 is growing, but the available supply is extremely limited, Myerson says. "It's a product that's priced high enough to justify going into space and sending it back to Earth," he noted.
After 50 years without a single human visitor, the Moon is back in vogue, with NASA leading a flyby mission this week. The Artemis flight is the first to send astronauts back since 1972 and is part of a series of missions that the US space agency envisions will lead to a permanent human presence, including a lunar base. Meanwhile, China is on track to land a manned moon landing this decade.
And with private companies, rather than governments, increasingly taking over the satellite business, deep space exploration is experiencing a renaissance, bringing fresh energy not seen since the Apollo program.
A commercial lunar mining operation would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but the explosive growth of private access to space through companies like Blue Origin or its competitor SpaceX is making off-Earth businesses increasingly possible.
A slew of international missions are expected to land on the moon in the next few years, and Interlune is not the only company exploring helium-3.
Ispace, a robotic spacecraft company based in Japan, has partnered with another American startup, Magna Petra, which claims to be developing an "AI-based" and "non-destructive, energy-efficient recovery of helium-3 from lunar regolith".
"We're betting the cost of access to the Moon will come down," Myerson predicts.
He's partnered with 90-year-old former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who is CEO. Schmitt - the only geologist to have set foot on the Moon as part of the last manned U.S. mission, "Apollo 17" since 1972, has been advocating lunar helium mining since the 1980s.
Angel Abud-Madrid, director of the Space Resources Center at the Colorado School of Mines, says the key to the feasibility of mining helium-3 will be whether the lunar regolith has a high enough concentration of the element.
The professor gives the metaphor of "gold in the ocean" - the sea is full of millions of tons of tiny gold particles floating around, but no company is trying to mine it. Why? "It's in extremely low concentrations, so the cost of extracting it doesn't even compare to the cost of gold," Abud-Madrid explained.
That's why later this year Interlune will send a multispectral camera to the moon's south pole with a probe to assess not only the quantities but also the concentrations of helium-3.
"Object of adoration"
But this fresh pioneering spirit surrounding lunar resource extraction raises questions about whether it is ethically right. Critics say history is littered with pioneers who have rushed into uncharted territory only to realize too late that they have caused irreparable damage to an environment they did not fully understand.
Aboud-Madrid points out that when he first began studying space mining 25 years ago, there was mostly excitement, but now questions about the environmental impact are increasingly being asked.
"The moon has been an object of worship for millennia. Every civilization has seen the moon as a place with philosophical and religious connotations," he notes. "You can go to an asteroid and destroy it, do whatever you want - it is just one in a million. But the moon, you see it every night... Is it okay? This is a very valid question that has been asked recently and that needs to be addressed at some point.
Interlune does not use the word "mining", which has destructive connotations, but instead says it envisions "extraction", which the company says "will unlock unprecedented growth and innovation for the betterment of the Earth and humanity."
The wording is intentional, amid growing concern that humanity could destroy pristine environments. Astronomers have warned that mining operations could affect the future prospects for conducting important scientific research from the lunar surface, which is extremely cold and isolated, making it a prime location for sensitive equipment.
Scientists have called for the protection of certain areas known as sites of exceptional scientific interest, including the polar regions and the radio-quiet far side, which could be ideal for deep-space observations.
"We don't want half the moon or any huge area off-limits to commercial or research activities," said Martin Elvis, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. "We just want a few small patches of it".
At an astronautics conference last year, he warned that "rare, valuable real estate is known to be a big source of controversy and conflict" and that there is a pressing unanswered question about how they are properly protected.
Among these concerns is the opaque legal aspect of lunar mining - the 1967 Outer Space Treaty clearly states that no country can claim ownership of a celestial body like the Moon, but makes no mention of commercial activities.
Myerson points out that there is room for business and scientists in the lunar age. "The Moon is big", he argues, but adds that his team wants to proceed "carefully in a way that leaves the object open to future use".
But Interlune is just one player in the global race to establish a presence on the Moon. China's Chang"e-6 mission successfully returned samples from the far side of the Moon in 2024, which included helium-3. State media reported that the mission data will help Beijing estimate the total amount of helium-3 on the moon, which has been described as a "energy source in the future".
In the coming decades, the moon is expected to become a microcosm of power struggles here on Earth, with major world powers - Russia, the United States and China - all having ambitious plans to return space probes and humans to the moon.
"We are watching very closely countries that may not think in the same way as us, such as China, which is acting very, very vigorously", Myerson said. "I think it is important for the West and the United States to have a presence on the moon."