In lab, Interlune makes gas-bearing lunar simulant in four hours

Inside a high-temperature vacuum chamber, Interlune has compressed a geological wait of roughly 15,000 years into four hours. The Seattle space-resources startup bombarded selected mineral grains with accelerated helium plasma, producing gas-bearing lunar simulant on Earth instead of waiting for naturally weathered lunar material or a future mission to bring more samples back.

The target is ilmenite, the mineral Apollo-era research identified as the main helium-retaining component of lunar regolith. Solar wind — a stream of particles from the Sun — gradually disrupts the outer edge of its crystal lattice, creating microscopic defects that trap volatile gases. Interlune reproduced that damage by turning helium into plasma, accelerating the ions into simulated ilmenite, and then heating the material to check what had been retained.

A mass spectrometer detected helium escaping between 300°C and 800°C, a release profile the company says matches Apollo sample data. Interlune can now blend the treated ilmenite with other terrestrial minerals to approximate particular lunar sites. Conventional lunar-regolith simulants reproduce particle size and mineral composition, but not the solar-wind gases found in authentic samples.

So what changes in practice? Engineers can test gas-extraction hardware on Earth with material that behaves more like the resource they may encounter on the Moon. Interlune plans to use it for its Harvesting System, which uses mechanical methods rather than heating regolith to nearly 1,000°C; the company says that design could reduce power consumption by up to ten times, a potentially useful margin where both power and mass are constrained.

The limits are clear. This is a laboratory demonstration, not lunar production or an operating mine. Interlune plans to offer the simulant and testing services to space companies, research institutions and government agencies. Its Houston-based Interlune Research Lab is backed by up to $4.84 million from the Texas Space Commission.