Lunar tunes

10.08.08: THE JAPANESE lunar probe Muses-F, partly funded by Disney, has returned to Earth with 8.6kg of helium-3, a close cousin of the gas used to fill Mickey Mouse balloons. Essentially non-existent on the Earth, helium-3 is seen as the perfect fuel for a nuclear fusion reactor. A commercial version of such a reactor, designed to harness the power source of the sun, is just a decade or two away.