NASA suffered a major blow to its lunar exploration mission on Wednesday when it revealed that delays and cost overruns have forced it to scrap a planned Moon rover that it had already spent $450 million developing.
Designed to seek for ice and other resources on the lunar surface, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) was meant to open the way for crewed flights by American astronauts under the Artemis program later this decade.
“Decisions like this are never easy,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator of the science mission directorate.
“But in this case, the projected remaining expenses for VIPER would have resulted in having to either cancel or disrupt many other missions.”
Originally scheduled to launch in 2023, NASA had anticipated the mobile robot would explore the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon, where ice reserves have persisted for billions of years.
However, the US space agency asked in 2022 to postpone launch until late 2024 in order to give the Pittsburgh-based business Astrobotic, which is providing the Griffin lander vehicle, additional time for preflight testing as part of the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, a public-private partnership.
The rover’s launch readiness date was subsequently pushed back even further to September 2025, with an estimated $609.6 million increase in cost.
NASA’s science mission directorate deputy associate administrator for exploration, Joel Kearns, noted that the agency has informed Congress of their decision.
The rover was “completely assembled” but had not yet undergone certain tests that would certify it could withstand launch, flying through the vacuum of space, and experiencing extreme temperatures, said Kearns.
However, he added, if NASA could work out a fair deal with interested commercial partners, the rover might still be employed in future missions, either entirely or in portions.
The launch of Astrobotic, which launched the unsuccessful Peregrine lander in January, is scheduled for late 2025. However, instead of a NASA rover, Astrobotic will now launch a “mass simulator” or hefty weight.
In spite of the setback, Kearns maintained that the US was not lagging behind China in their space race, as China managed to return the first samples from the Moon’s far side in June.
“We congratulate China’s national space agency for the seemingly very successful Chang’e-6 mission,” he said.
But he added that, by partnering with the space industry under the CLPS program, “we think that we’re going to have a more robust science program and a more robust lunar landing capability in the United States.”
