Part I of this series briefly explained what helium-3 is, its potential uses, and why the possibility of extracting it from the Moon has attracted growing commercial interest. It then discussed some of the insurance issues that could arise in connection with lunar helium-3 activities.
This second post turns to another fundamental issue for the development of a commercial lunar helium-3 industry: financing.
Lunar mining operations will require substantial capital long before they generate revenues. Yet financing these activities presents legal questions that do not arise (or arise very differently) in conventional terrestrial projects. For a lender considering financing a lunar helium-3 operation, three issues are particularly important: whether the extracted resource can be owned, whether the assets or future revenues can serve as enforceable collateral, and whether the underlying mission can be legally authorized. At present, none of these issues is entirely settled.
Against this background, five aspects of financing lunar helium-3 activities deserve particular attention: the present availability of financing; the legal rights investors and lenders would require; the likely role of traditional lenders compared with risk-tolerant investors; the use of future production, contractual rights, and lunar infrastructure as collateral; and the legal and regulatory developments that could facilitate conventional financing.
Financing Lunar Helium-3 Operations Today
Conventional bank financing of a lunar helium-3 mining operation would likely be difficult today. The satellite industry is mature enough that traditional debt financing is well established, but novel activities such as lunar mining present a very different proposition.
At least initially, a lunar mining company is more likely to rely on equity and venture capital, government funding or contracts, and commercial arrangements such as off-take agreements.
For a traditional lender, the questions are very practical: What exactly is the collateral? How can a security interest in it be perfected? And what happens if the borrower defaults? If the collateral consists of mining equipment operating on the Moon, repossession is obviously not quite the same as repossessing an asset on Earth.
Financing is therefore possible, but conventional bank financing would be considerably more difficult. As the industry develops and the legal framework becomes clearer, specialized lending and other financing structures may emerge.
What Would Investors and Lenders Need?
The legal concerns can be reduced to three practical issues: rights in the resource, rights in the collateral, and regulatory certainty.
First, rights in the resource. Investors and lenders will want to know that, if a company extracts helium-3, it has a secure legal right to possess, use, transfer, and sell it. U.S. law recognizes rights in extracted space resources, but the international legal framework remains unsettled.
Second, rights in the collateral. Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code provides a well-established framework for secured lending on Earth, including with respect to space equipment while it is on Earth. Applying those rules to assets operating on the Moon, however, raises difficult questions concerning perfection, priority, and, especially, enforcement.
There is an international framework designed specifically to address security interests in space assets: the Space Protocol to the Cape Town Convention, adopted in 2012. However, the Protocol has not entered into force.
There may also be room for creative solutions under existing commercial law. For example, I have explored whether concepts under UCC Article 7, including the use of a virtual bailee, could potentially be adapted to lunar equipment through electronic documents of title combined with technological control. Such control might include, for example, a technological mechanism—a “kill switch”—capable of preventing a debtor from continuing to use the equipment following default. These possibilities remain largely theoretical, but they illustrate how existing commercial-law concepts might be adapted to assets operating beyond Earth.
Third, regulatory certainty. Investors and lenders need to know what governmental authorizations are required, which agencies issue them, and whether there is a reasonably predictable regulatory path for carrying out the mission.
Traditional Lenders or Risk-Tolerant Investors?
At least during the early stages of lunar resource development, financing is likely to come primarily from investors willing to accept significant legal and commercial risk rather than from conventional banks.
Traditional lenders generally require greater certainty about what the borrower owns, what assets can serve as collateral, and whether the lender’s rights can actually be enforced. They also generally require a reasonably predictable path to repayment. With lunar mining, however, both whether an operation will generate revenues and when those revenues will materialize may be uncertain.
Equity investors and venture capital funds are better positioned to accept both the legal uncertainty and an uncertain timeline for returns.
Can Future Helium-3 Production and Lunar Infrastructure Serve as Collateral?
An important financing question is whether future helium-3 production, rights under supply agreements, or the lunar mining infrastructure itself could serve as collateral before the helium-3 is transported back to Earth.
Potentially, yes, but these different types of collateral present very different legal and practical problems.
Future revenues and rights under supply or advance-supply agreements are probably the easiest conceptually. Businesses are routinely financed on the basis of receivables and contractual rights to future payments. Article 9 provides mechanisms for taking security interests in these types of assets and could, in principle, apply to contractual rights arising from helium-3 transactions as well.
The mining equipment itself presents more difficult issues. A lender could potentially take a security interest in lunar equipment under Article 9, but applying existing perfection and priority rules to assets operating off-Earth raises significant questions. More importantly, there is the practical problem of enforcement: how does a lender repossess a mining robot sitting on the Moon?
Technological solutions might eventually provide part of the answer. I have analyzed, for example, the possibility of combining blockchain-based mechanisms with technological control that could disable equipment following default. These solutions, however, remain hypothetical.
Additional complications may also arise. As lunar infrastructure becomes more strategically important, national-security considerations could limit whether control of certain assets may simply be transferred from one operator to another. Authorization and licensing present a related issue: even if a lender acquires enforceable rights in the collateral, that does not necessarily mean that the lender—or a purchaser following foreclosure—has regulatory authority to operate the equipment.
Thus, lunar assets, future production, and contractual rights could potentially support financing. The more difficult question is not simply whether they can be characterized as collateral, but whether a lender can obtain meaningful and enforceable rights in that collateral.
What Legal Changes Could Facilitate Conventional Financing?
Improving access to conventional financing brings the analysis back to the same three issues: ownership, collateral, and authorization.
First, greater international clarity concerning rights in extracted resources would reduce legal risk. U.S. law recognizes rights in extracted space resources, but greater international consensus would give lenders additional confidence that those rights will be recognized and protected across jurisdictions.
Second, lenders would benefit from a clearer system for taking, perfecting, and enforcing security interests in space assets. Such a framework might develop through the entry into force of the Space Protocol to the Cape Town Convention, through changes to Article 9 of the UCC that more specifically address financing of space assets, or through other legal mechanisms adapted to off-Earth assets. The objective is straightforward: greater certainty concerning the lender’s rights and remedies.
Third, companies and their lenders would benefit from a clearer mission-authorization or licensing framework for novel space activities.
There has been movement in this direction. President Trump’s August 2025 Executive Order 14335 directed the Secretary of Commerce to propose an individualized mission-authorization process for novel space activities. In March 2026, the Office of Space Commerce released its proposal for Space Commerce Certification, structured around a single application and coordinated interagency review. The proposal has not yet become a binding regulatory regime. In August 2026, the Office of Space Commerce launched a pilot phase and began seeking companies to participate.
Ultimately, the financing question returns to three fundamental issues: Can the resource be owned? Can the lender obtain an enforceable interest in the collateral? And can the mission be authorized and carried out under a predictable regulatory framework?
The greater the legal certainty on these three points, the easier it will be to bring conventional financing into the emerging lunar resource economy.
