Leroy Chiao, Ph.D.
NASA Astronaut and ISS Commander, ret.
CSO, Black Moon Energy Corporation (BMEC)
Black Moon Energy endeavors to perform lunar exploration and discovery, to build the infrastructure for helium-3 collection, partial purification, and return to Earth. This may sound like a daunting effort. While it is not without complexity, the required spaceflight technologies already exist and have been demonstrated many times over by prior lunar and other missions. The regolith-moving and chemical processing technologies are well-understood and have been in commercial use for well over one hundred years on the earth and only need to be adapted for use in the lunar environment.
The United States landed the first lunar Surveyor missions in 1966 and received the first lunar data. The Soviet Union followed with their Luna probes, returning lunar samples to Earth in the 1970s. The Apollo program landed humans on the lunar surface and returned over 840 pounds of lunar regolith and rocks, including core samples, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. During the 1970s, the Soviets operated Lunakhod, a Moon rover. More recently (starting in 2007), the Chinese Chang’e series of landers and Yutu rovers also explored the Moon, including the previously unexplored far side. Chang’e 6 also returned a small far-side lunar sample to the Earth in 2024.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Caltech is the premier organization responsible for the design, creation and operation of spacecraft to destinations within our solar system and beyond. For nearly the last four decades, JPL, with NASA, has operated rovers on the Martian surface, including drilling core samples for future return to Earth. This is why BMEC has partnered with JPL to create our Fusion-1 and follow-on lunar rovers, based on legacy hardware programs and designs.
Similarly, BMEC has engaged commercial companies and engineering firms to develop the regolith moving and collection vehicles, and front-end chemical process units. Spacecraft and rockets currently under development and testing are being designed not only to bring payload to the lunar surface, but to also return mass to the Earth.
Thus, the BMEC plan, from a technical standpoint, is well-understood, and in many cases, has been demonstrated to be entirely practical, over several decades.