Plans to look for ice on the moon with the help of a special rover have been scrapped due to supply chain delays and other issues, NASA announced this week.
“Following a comprehensive internal review, NASA announced Wednesday its intent to discontinue development of its VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) project,” said the space agency in a Wednesday press release . It cited cost increases, past delays and risks of future cost growth as its reasons for discontinuing the project.
VIPER was designed to search the moon for potential resources as part of “NASA’s commitment to study the Moon and help unravel some of the greatest mysteries of our solar system,” which includes other projects such as the Artemis missions .
Initially, the VIPER rover was expected to launch late last year. However, schedule and supply chain issues plagued the project. First it was pushed to late this year so NASA could do more pre-flight testing of the rover’s Astrobotic lander. Astrobotic – a Pittsburgh, Pa., company – said in 2022 that VIPER “was driven down Griffin’s sizeable ramps in simulated lunar surface situations to prove safe egress after landing on the Moon,” during testing at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
VIPER was then delayed further and given an expected launch date of September 2025 due to “additional schedule and supply chain delays,” said NASA. Similar delays impacted the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander.
“NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent,” said the agency.
Astrobotic will continue its Griffin Mission One , a separate project, within its contract with NASA, the agency said. It will work towards a fall 2025 launch for that mission.
Even though the VIPER project is no more, NASA said it will live on in a way. Instruments and components from the rover will be reused for future missions to the moon. For example, copies of three of VIPER’s four instruments will be used for future moon landings.
“We are committed to studying and exploring the Moon for the benefit of humanity through the CLPS program,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years. Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.”
In particular, NASA will continue to pursue goals to verify the presence of ice at the lunar South Pole. For example, the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), is scheduled to land on the moon in the fourth quarter of this year. It will “search for water ice and carry out a resource utilization demonstration using a drill and mass spectrometer to measure the volatile content of subsurface materials,” said NASA.
Before VIPER is disassembled, NASA also said it will “consider expressions of interest from U.S. industry and international partners,” for use of the existing rover system by Aug. 1. It said interested parties should contact HQ-CLPS-Payload@mail.nasa.gov after 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, July 18, and then the project will conduct an orderly close out through spring 2025.
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