NASA Cancels VIPER’s Journey to the Moon After Spending $450 Million on Rover

NASA’s boxy four-wheeled rover gained’t make it to the Moon in spite of everything, on account of growth delays and mounting prices which have apparently pushed the house company to name off its ice-hunting mission.

VIPER, or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, was designed to search out and research water ice on the Moon’s south pole. NASA had spent round $450 million on the development of its 1,000-pound rover, which was initially imagined to launch in late 2023. The launch date was first pushed again to 2024 and later to 2025 on account of extra schedule and provide chain delays. Now, the house company determined to cancel the mission altogether, because it threatens to disrupt different industrial payload missions to the Moon, NASA announced on Wednesday.

VIPER was imagined to launch with Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, which was meant to ship the rover to the Moon beneath a Business Lunar Payload Providers job order price $322 million. The Griffin mission itself was delayed to September 2025. Nonetheless, NASA says it stays dedicated to exploring the lunar floor with the assistance of its industrial companions.

“The company has an array of missions deliberate to search for ice and different sources on the Moon over the subsequent 5 years,” Nicola Fox, affiliate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, stated in a press release. “Our path ahead will make most use of the expertise and work that went into VIPER, whereas preserving crucial funds to help our strong lunar portfolio.”

NASA will disassemble the VIPER rover and reuse its components for future missions to the Moon. However earlier than it takes aside the robotic, the house company will first contemplate proposals from its industrial and worldwide companions which will present curiosity in utilizing VIPER.

Previous to its cancelation, NASA had described VIPER as essentially the most succesful robotic it will ship to the lunar floor, and the mission was integral to NASA’s future plans of building a sustainable human presence on the Moon. VIPER was designed to delve into completely shadowed areas on the lunar south pole to seek for pockets of water ice, which may very well be utilized by future astronauts as a part of NASA’s Artemis program.

The mission may have knowledgeable touchdown websites for upcoming Artemis missions, however NASA says it’ll “pursue various strategies to perform lots of VIPER’s targets and confirm the presence of ice on the lunar South Pole.” The Polar Assets Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), a NASA payload scheduled to land in late 2024, will seek for water ice utilizing a drill and mass spectrometer to measure the risky content material of subsurface supplies.