Why space resource extraction companies are racing to harvest lunar helium

Why stories about helium 'running out' indicate market volatility rather than scarcity

Only a few locations on Earth contain natural gas reserves with sufficiently high helium concentrations to make their extraction commercially viable, and geopolitical conflicts in these areas significantly affect helium production. This makes cost a major impediment to helium availability, particularly for scientific research, amid growing demand and ongoing depletion of reserves that took billions of years to form.

An overview of helium, the nonrenewable resource that's lighter than air

The second element in the periodic table naturally forms deep underground over the course of billions of years through the decay of radioactive elements, but it is used and lost to space at rates faster than it is generated. Because of this and its extensive applications in scientific technologies, scientists continue to seek avenues for its exploration, storage, and recycling.

The space race of the 21st century is focused on a permanent lunar outpost

After decades of dormancy, NASA and SpaceX hope the Artemis program will provide opportunities for lunar resource extraction. Countries like India, China, and the UAE have also shown interest in developing future lunar economies.

Helium formation, from radioactive decay inside Earth to nuclear fusion within stellar cores

Over the course of billions of years, uranium and thorium undergo alpha decay, producing helium nuclei—two protons and two neutrons—which become helium atoms after gaining two electrons. This helium becomes trapped in underground reservoirs along with other gases and can be recovered during natural gas extraction.

The industrial methods for recovering helium, including filters and cryogenic separation

Membranes with microscopic pores of varying sizes can be used to selectively filter out components of natural gas, including helium, which can then be concentrated. Because helium requires the lowest temperature of all elements to condense into a liquid, extracted natural gas can also be cooled until only helium remains as a gas.

A visit to the Federal Helium Reserve, which once supplied up to 30% of US helium

The underground storage facility in Amarillo, Texas, was established by the Helium Act in 1925, when helium was viewed as a strategic resource whose export could enable other nations to use it for military airships. The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 instructed the Department of the Interior to begin selling off the facility and reserve, with the final sale occurring in 2024.

Why the ratios of helium isotopes are analyzed to investigate ocean circulation

Volcanic activity on the seafloor produces high ratios of helium-3 to helium-4, which can be tracked in ocean samples more easily than other elements because helium is nonreactive. Water from deep ocean currents can also be distinguished from air-exposed surface water sources by comparing these ratios, since atmospheric helium ratios are much lower.

Spacecraft remnants and human waste left behind on the moon add to the trash in space

As more countries reach the moon with successful probe landings and unsuccessful crashes, more materials are left behind, adding to the amount of trash that needs to be retrieved. A United Nations treaty declared the moon a common heritage of humanity, exempting any one country from exclusive responsibility for cleanup.

Weird ways critical minerals are being mined

Critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and graphite are economically crucial non-fuel resources subject to supply chain risks. To diversify production, scientists developed odd ways to harvest them. This article breaks down the weirdest approaches, including extracting minerals from seawater using algae, phytomining plants, and asteroids.

How helium turns the Large Hadron Collider into the world's largest cryogenic system

Across three stages, five "cryogenic islands," and weeks of cooling, 36,000 metric tons of magnets are successively brought down to temperatures colder than outer space using a closed liquid helium system. Helium continues to circulate during the collider's operation to maintain the magnets' temperature and the transmission of electrical current with zero resistance.

How scientists discovered helium from sunlight over a decade before seeing it on Earth

In 1868, using tools that dispersed light into its constituent colors like a prism, astronomers Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer independently identified a bright yellow line in the solar spectrum that didn't match any known element. Fourteen years later, amid continued skepticism over the existence of a new element, the same spectral signature was observed in lava on Earth.

Geothermal power can reduce the dangerous mining of rare earth elements

Geothermal brines—mineral-rich underground fluids extracted for use in geothermal plants—contain small concentrations of REEs that can be recovered after energy generation. Although researchers suggest that this retrieval requires complex extraction methods at a significant scale to account for high flow rates, the chemical processes also occur in traditional REE processing.

Explaining the engineering challenges of extracting metal-rich nodules from the seafloor

Proposed solutions for collecting these potato-shaped rocks involve lifting a slurry composed of them, organic debris, and water through several kilometers of flexible tubing to a ship on the surface, a process that is more difficult than pumping crude oil. One method would use compressed air, but this method is only 15% energy-efficient.

Lithium can store and deliver substantial energy for its cost and weight

When exploring which compounds would be best suited for batteries, scientists sought elements that were relatively inexpensive to mine, readily available, and that provided high energy density—how much chemical energy an element could store for its size. Lithium-ion batteries provide these benefits and discharge at very low rates when unused.

Earth's core is leaking precious metals, including gold

Earth's core, containing 99.999% of all known gold, is leaking trace amounts of precious metals into the mantle. Advanced isotopic methods have detected this leakage at volcanoes in Hawai'i, providing new insights into the movement of material beneath Earth's surface.

A map of the moon, using lidar

When planning to land on the moon, knowing the topography matters. This map of the lunar surface was created by using 6 billion measurements from NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, a type of lidar. Check out the technically accurate depths of craters and ancient oceans on our beloved lunar neighbor with this fun, impressive map.

The accidental birth of radio astronomy and the benefits of a moon-based telescope

Detecting radio waves from distant celestial objects is complicated by noise from solar wind, which the nighttime side of the moon is shielded from. If lunar temperature extremes can be overcome, the environment may serve as an optimal future home for radio astronomy, a field that began in 1928 when a 30-meter-long directional antenna, mostly out of brass and wood, picked up signals from the Sagittarius constellation.

An oxygen tank explosion forced Apollo 13 to abort its moon landing

The 1970 mission—intended to be the third lunar landing—forced astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise to focus solely on their survival. They engineered a makeshift filter to handle the carbon dioxide they produced, which exceeded the lunar module's capacity.

A lunar probe’s crash landing may have spilled tardigrades onto the moon

In 2019, Israel’s Beresheet probe, which contained tardigrades in a cryptobiotic state, underwent a gyroscopic failure when attempting to land. If they survived the crash, the tardigrades may have spread across the lunar surface, raising ethical concerns about planetary contamination.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

The moon's little-known, incredibly thin atmosphere

Earth's colorless, lifeless moon is often portrayed as devoid of an atmosphere. However, this fascinating article describes the very thin layer of gases floating above the surface of our celestial neighbor, a layer so thin it's technically known as...

Understanding why suction cups rely on Earth's atmosphere to work

When pressed against a surface, air is squeezed out of a sealed volume, causing the internal pressure to drop below the surrounding atmospheric pressure, and this imbalance creates the "sticking." For this reason, astronauts do not use suction cups or related technologies to stay on spacecraft during spacewalks.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

You are 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be hit by space trash

In 2023, about 1,500 pieces of space junk fell to Earth, with most consisting of payload fragmentation debris. The vast majority that falls back to Earth burns up before reaching the surface, making it three times less likely to be struck by space trash than by a meteorite.

NASA's ESCAPADE mission will study Mars' atmosphere

The $80M mission—a collaboration between private companies, universities, and NASA—sent two copy machine-sized orbiters on a Blue Origin rocket to the red planet to study its magnetic field and atmospheric loss.

The dynamo theory explains how planets generate their own magnetic fields

According to the theory, a large magnetic field generator, or dynamo, is created when liquid metal flows through the planet's outer core, producing electric currents that generate a magnetic field. Magnetization patterns in rocks on the surface of planets can serve as evidence for the presence of this internal structure at some point in the celestial object's past.

The 3D-printed rocket maker competing with SpaceX

Producing rockets cheaply and at scale may require atypical manufacturing processes like those developed by Relativity Space, a 3D-printer of rockets. Relativity hopes to not just compete with, but beat, SpaceX in the race to get the first...

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.