When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon nearly six decades ago, the moment symbolized courage and the human drive to push beyond known limits.
Today, NASA’s return to the Moon carries that same spirit, but it also raises an important question: What comes next?
Recently, the world watched as Artemis II carried astronauts around the Moon, with a crewed lunar landing targeted for early 2028. As lunar exploration gains momentum, it is becoming part of a broader conversation about national competitiveness, innovation and strategic resources.
One of the most compelling possibilities is helium-3, a rare isotope embedded in lunar soil that could play an important role in the future of advanced technologies, including quantum computing. As demand for faster, more powerful computing continues to rise, lunar resources may present a new frontier of strategic opportunity for the United States.
What Is Helium-3 and Why Does Quantum Computing Need It?
Helium-3 (He3) is a rare, stable, nonradioactive isotope of helium that behaves very differently from the more common helium-4. On Earth, it is almost nonexistent, making it both difficult and expensive to obtain. Yet in the world of quantum computing, helium-3 plays an irreplaceable role.
Quantum computers cannot operate at room temperature. Even the smallest amounts of heat or environmental noise can disrupt qubits (the basic units of information in quantum computing, similar to bits in traditional computers) causing them to lose their fragile quantum states in a process known as decoherence. When this happens, computations become unreliable or unusable. To function at all, most quantum systems must be cooled to temperatures just a few thousands of a degree above absolute zero (almost -460 degrees Fahrenheit).
Today’s leading quantum computers from IBM, Google and D-Wave, rely on dilution refrigerators (advanced cooling systems that bring quantum computers to near absolute zero temperatures) that use mixtures of helium-3 and helium-4 to achieve such low temperatures. No other known coolant can reliably achieve and maintain the extreme cold required for superconducting qubits, making helium-3 an essential component of quantum computing infrastructure.
Each quantum computer requires roughly one to ten liters of helium-3 per year, and demand is expected to increase as quantum systems scale in number and size. As quantum computing moves from research labs toward commercial and national security applications, access to helium-3 is becoming a critical constraint on the industry’s growth.
For quantum computing to scale effectively and meet global demands, the need for extreme cooling, called cryogenic bottleneck, must be addressed. Helium-3 offers a promising path to help overcome this limitation.
The Scarcity of Helium-3 on Earth
On Earth, helium-3 is extremely rare. Most of the supply comes from the decay of tritium in nuclear weapons stockpiles, with small additional amounts recovered during helium separation from natural gas. Because tritium has a half-life of just over 12 years, new helium-3 becomes available very slowly, and production cannot be scaled to meet rising demand. As a result, the total amount of usable helium-3 on Earth is estimated to be less than 45 pounds, a small figure when compared to the amount a single quantum computer requires per year.
In mid-2025, the U.S. Department of Energy purchased three liters of lunar derived helium-3, the first time the U.S. government acquired a resource sourced beyond Earth, with a delivery expected in April 2029. While small in quantity and still years away from being delivered, the purchase sent a clear signal: helium-3 is now viewed as a material of national importance. This scarcity reframes helium-3 as a strategic asset. As quantum computing becomes integral to defense, cryptography and economic competitiveness, control over reliable helium-3 supply could translate into a meaningful advantage in the global race for quantum leadership.
How Much Helium-3 Is on the Moon?
Unlike Earth, the Moon lacks a protective magnetic field. Over billions of years, this has allowed the solar wind to continuously implant trace amounts of helium-3 into the lunar surface. Those tiny deposits slowly accumulated to create a reserve that estimates around one million tons of helium-3, a staggering contrast to the less than 45 pounds believed to exist on our planet today.
Evidence of this lunar supply dates back decades: helium-3 was first identified in samples returned by NASA’s Apollo missions, giving scientists early confirmation that the isotope was embedded in lunar soil. However, helium-3 concentrations in the lunar surface area are extremely low, typically ranging from just 2.4 to 26 parts per billion. Extracting a single pound could require processing anywhere from roughly 45,000 to more than 450,000 tons of lunar soil, an industrial effort comparable in scale to operating a major copper mine on Earth.
This combination of vast total reserves and extraction challenges defines the lunar helium-3 opportunity and underscores why sustained lunar infrastructure, like that being developed under Artemis, would be essential to making helium-3 a viable resource rather than a scientific curiosity.
How Artemis Bridges the Gap
NASA’s Artemis program is targeting its first crewed lunar landing in 2028, with plans for sustained missions and the gradual buildout of a permanent surface presence. The agency has shifted toward an approach focused on developing on-Moon infrastructure with power, transport, communications and habitats to support long-term operations.
This infrastructure is exactly what would make helium-3 mining viable, effectively laying the groundwork for a future lunar resource economy. Private companies are already aligning with this timeline; for example, Interlune is planning a resource development mission in 2027 and a pilot mining operation by 2029, closely mirroring Artemis’s push toward sustained lunar activity.
The Industry Is Already Moving: The Helium-3 Supply Chain Is Taking Shape
Bluefors, a leading manufacturer of dilution refrigerators, has signed an agreement to purchase up to 10,000 liters of helium-3 annually from Interlune between 2028 and 2037, one of the largest He-3 procurement deals to date. Other players, including Maybell Quantum and Microsoft, are also exploring supply agreements, as demand grows across the quantum and cryogenics industries.
At the same time, China is advancing plans to mine lunar helium-3, aiming to secure a dominant position in its future supply, while the United States and its allies are accelerating efforts to build their own lunar infrastructure. As both governments and private companies move forward with aligned timelines and investments, helium-3 is rapidly becoming a strategically contested and commercially anticipated asset.
The Challenges in Obtaining Helium-3
Significant obstacles remain. A USGS astrogeologist has noted that extracting helium-3 at the scale envisioned would require processing millions of tons of lunar soil. At the same time, researchers are exploring alternatives such as closed-cycle cryogenics, pulse-tube refrigeration and new superconducting materials, though these approaches are still early-stage and face their own technical limits.
There is also a growing geopolitical dimension. China’s lunar missions have confirmed the presence of helium-3, reinforcing that this is not just a scientific pursuit but a strategic competition over future-critical resources.
Artemis’s return to the moon represents more than just a continuation of Armstrong’s “one small step”; it is a new foundation for sustained lunar operations that could unlock access to helium-3 and enable the next era of quantum computing. As space infrastructure and private investment converge, the Moon is emerging not just as a destination, but as a potential driver of technological advantage.