Space mining companies compared

The reviewed award records establish contracts and proposed technology scope; no completed extraction test, flight or resource delivery is established by these sources.

Launched Peregrine Mission One on 2024-01-08 carrying NASA's Neutron Spectrometer System, Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System and Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer; the instruments collected in-flight data only because a propellant-system failure prevented a landing and the spacecraft re-entered Earth's atmosphere on 2024-01-18. No lunar resource measurement was made. Acquired Masten Space Systems' assets in 2022.

Blue Origin states it has made solar cells and transmission wire from regolith simulants since 2021, and that Blue Alchemist passed its critical design review in September 2025. All of this work is terrestrial and on simulant; no Blue Origin resource hardware has flown. NASA TechPort project 146991, checked 2026-10-04, does not show that the planned 2026 simulated-lunar autonomous demonstration was carried out.

The abstract says the Phase I work would refine a concept and test layouts by modifying existing prototypes. No completed LuMA test result, lunar feedstock measurement, or flight instrument is in the captured records. The Phase II award text captured here is the title only.

The abstract says the proposed funding would be used for a bench-scale prototype and safety analysis. No completed prototype, test result, or lunar resource processing is in the captured records.

Carried Honeybee Robotics' Lunar PlanetVac on Blue Ghost Mission 1 (landed 2025-03-02); the payload collected, transferred and sorted lunar soil using pressurized nitrogen. The sampling hardware was Honeybee's; the material was not returned to Earth or processed.

No lunar hardware has flown. Fleet Space operates its ExoSphere passive-seismic (ambient noise tomography) system for terrestrial mineral exploration; SPIDER is described as its lunar variant.

Ground development only: company and press state it tested its reactor concept with lunar simulant developed at the University of Central Florida. No lunar flight: the ispace Mission 2 lander (launched January 2025) payload list does not include Helios.

Lunar PlanetVac, a NASA CLPS payload, collected, transferred and sorted lunar soil at Mare Crisium on Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 (March 2025), per NASA. The TRIDENT drill in NASA's PRIME-1 suite on Intuitive Machines' IM-2 (March 2025) completed its range-of-motion checks, but NASA says the lander came to rest on its side, preventing full drill operation; the gases MSOLO detected were judged anthropogenic, so no lunar ice measurement was made. Honeybee also built the P-Sampler pneumatic sampler for JAXA's Phobos sample-return mission (shipped 2023).

Ground development and one suborbital experiment: NASA states ICON flew the Duneflow experiment on a Blue Origin suborbital rocket in February 2025 to characterize simulated lunar regolith under about two minutes of simulated lunar gravity. No lunar hardware has flown.

Earth-based work only. Company-stated: parabolic-flight tests of regolith sorting and extraction prototypes (2024-2025); a full-scale excavator prototype built with Vermeer and unveiled 2025-05-07 (tested 'with auxiliary components'); helium implanted into an ilmenite simulant and released at temperatures matching Apollo samples (announced 2026-08-26); and 'Cold Capture' cryogenic separation producing 99% pure helium-3 from terrestrial Grade A helium (announced 2026-07-20). No Interlune hardware has flown to the Moon and no lunar helium-3 has been extracted or delivered.

• Texas Space Commission grant to Interlune (regolith simulant center)2025-09-02. (company announcement)
• AFWERX SBIR Direct-to-Phase II contract to Interlune (helium-3 separation)2025-08-26. (official award record)
• Maybell Quantum agreement to buy lunar helium-3 from Interlune2025-05-07. (company announcement)
• US DOE Isotope Program agreement to buy lunar helium-3 from Interlune2025-05-07. (company announcement)
• DOE Isotope Program grant to Interlune (terrestrial helium-3 separation)2024-07-24. (official award record)
• NASA TechFlights grant to Interlune (regolith comminution)2024-06-27. (official award record)
• NSF SBIR Phase I award to Interlune (regolith size sorting)2023-09-20. (official award record)

• Interlune SAFE offering (Form D signed 2022-08-19)2022-08-19. USD 1,850,000 (regulatory filing)

Delivered IM-2 (launched 2025-02-26) to the Mons Mouton region; per IM, the lander landed inside a crater on its side, some payload milestones including NASA's PRIME-1 suite were accelerated before the batteries depleted, and the mission ended 2025-03-07. NASA states the drill demonstrated its range of motion but the lander's orientation prevented full drill operation; MSOLO detected gases likely from the lander's own propulsion. IM's Grace hopper (carrying DLR's LRAD radiometer, meant to demonstrate water-ice detection methods in a shadowed crater) did not complete its hops. No lunar resource was sampled or measured in situ.

Built the ~5 kg Tenacious micro-rover with an Epiroc-developed regolith shovel and obtained a mission authorization for it under Luxembourg's 2017 space resources law (which ispace-EUROPE describes as the first granted in Europe); the rover was stowed on the Mission 2 lander, which hard-landed on 2025-06-05 UTC, so it never collected regolith. NASA recorded interim milestones on its regolith contract in 2022. Completed MAGPIE Mission Definition Review (Sept 2025) and according to ispace-EUROPE, was awarded the EUR 65 million ESA Phase 2 contract (July 2026). The stated contract value is not a payment total.

• NASA lunar regolith purchase contract to ispace Europe, $5,0002020-12-03. (official award record)

Launched two landers (2022-12-11 and 2025-01-15) that reached lunar orbit; both were lost during landing, so no lunar regolith was collected and no ownership transfer to NASA took place. Mission 2 carried a Takasago Thermal Engineering water-electrolysis payload filled with ultra-pure water supplied from Earth by Kurita; it could not operate on the surface because the lander was lost.

• NASA lunar regolith purchase contract to ispace (Japan), $5,0002020-12-03. (official award record)

Flew the MAPP rover (Lunar Voyage 1) on IM-2 (launched 2025-02-26); the rover carried a regolith collection mechanism for the NASA space-resources contract and a neutron spectrometer for water-signature prospecting, but the lander tipped and MAPP was never deployed, so no regolith was collected and no surface prospecting occurred. The company states that it received a $0.10 NASA payment in 2021 for completing the contract's concept review. That stated payment is not collection, an ownership transfer, or delivery of regolith. NASA's 3 December 2020 selection release lists payment milestones as: 10% of the proposed price upon award, 10% upon launch, and 80% upon successful completion, and says NASA's payment is exclusively for the lunar regolith. That release does not record that any payment was made, and it does not say whether the contract continued after IM-2. Provides the rover mobility element for the NASA LuSTR ASPECT project (autonomous site preparation: moving regolith, grading, compaction).

Ground tests only: with NASA Kennedy Swamp Works, the company's LR-1 reactor melted about 25 kg of lunar regolith simulant in a vacuum chamber and produced molecular oxygen and metals (NASA, May 2025). NASA SBIR Phase I (2024) and Phase II (2025) awards fund a long-life molten regolith electrolysis anode (IMMORTAL). No flight hardware.

No flight hardware, measurements or extraction to date. Documented steps are agreements: an ispace memorandum of understanding (Dec 2024), a reimbursable CRADA with NASA Kennedy for use of a second MSOLO mass spectrometer (signed 2 Apr 2025), and a USD 22 million payload service agreement with ispace-EUROPE to carry MSOLO on an ispace micro-rover (Oct 2025).

No lunar mission flew. Masten performed terrestrial vertical-takeoff/landing test flights (600+ per Astrobotic) and flew payloads such as Honeybee Robotics' PlanetVac on suborbital tests.

Laboratory extraction of oxygen and metal from lunar regolith simulant under ESA contract 4000131940 (General Support Technology Programme, awarded 2020); sponsor of the 2020-2021 Metalysis-ESA Grand Challenge for miniaturised versions of its process. No flight hardware.

Lander test flights on Earth were reported (2011-2015 era); no spacecraft has been launched and no lunar resource has been measured, sampled or processed.

ASI states the technology had shown its effectiveness on the ground. No lunar operation, flight or extraction result is established by the sources reviewed.

NASA reports 122 grams of oxygen from MOXIE's completed Mars operations; OxEon supplied its electrolysis stack according to the company's account. The demonstrated result is instrument-wide and shared with other contributors.

The MMOST abstract refers to earlier technology heritage, then proposes component testing with lunar-regolith simulant and an integrated vacuum-chamber demonstration. The captured abstracts provide no completed MMOST or ALTAWS result, extraterrestrial processing demonstration, or flight.

Puli's PLWS neutron spectrometer flew on Intuitive Machines' IM-2, launched 2025-02-26 (see Puli Lunar Water Snooper (PLWS) on IM-2). The Athena lander touched down on 2025-03-06 and came to rest on its side, and the mission ended the next day. Puli states that PLWS returned data from the lunar surface; a press report of a Puli statement gives about 38 minutes of operation. No measurement results have been published, so no resource detection is established. NASA JPL's 2020 Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload challenge listed PLWS as first-prize winner in its Lunar Resource Potential category.

The Phase I abstract lists proof-of-concept and benchtop validation as project objectives, not reported results. No retrieved source in this batch establishes successful extraction, a flown system or delivered space resources.

Earth-based tests only. NASA reports that its regolith excavation-and-haul rover placed second overall at the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge finale (June 2024; $838,461 in Phase 2 prizes) and was tested in NASA Marshall's V-20 thermal vacuum chamber (August 2025). Starpath states it produced 48 grams of gaseous oxygen from icy regolith simulant in November 2025.

Built water-electrolysis equipment and delivered it for ispace Mission 2. The host failed to land; hydrogen and oxygen production on the lunar surface was not demonstrated. ispace states that Kurita supplied the experiment's ultra-pure water; this was not water extracted from the Moon.

No hardware test result, flight or lunar operation is established. The NASA Phase I contract funds development of a sealed regolith sample-handling intake.