NASA announced Wednesday that it is suspending the VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) project. It was the second time in less than a decade that NASA canceled plans for a rover scout to probe the moon for water ice, the decision coming six years after the cancellation of a similar mission, Resource Prospector.
The 430 kg (948 lb) rover is designed to fly to the Moon’s South Pole aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, the second planned lunar mission for the Pittsburgh-based company. Astrobotics’ first mission, the smaller Peregrine lander, ended prematurely in January when a propulsion problem prevented it from reaching the moon.
During a teleconference with members of the press, Joel Kearns, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for research within the Science Mission Directorate, cited rising costs as the main driver behind VIPER’s cancellation.
“When we formalized the VIPER project, we told Congress that the budget for the project would be $433.5 million and that the landing would be in late 2023,” Kearns said. “We had already made the decision to reschedule the landing to 2024 so that we could have Astrobotic do additional propulsion tests on the lander.
“When we made this decision, we updated the VIPER work plan and reset the budget to $505.4 million with a landing in late 2024. But our latest assessment, done earlier this year, showed that since we no longer plan to land VIPER at the end of 2024, but will instead have to do it for the 2025 science window, that VIPER project costs are expected to be $609.6 million.
Kearns said going over 30 percent of the original budget was too far and automatically triggered what he called a review of the cancellation freeze, which took place in June. Back in 2019, when VIPER was first announced, NASA quoted an initial estimate for the gold barrow-sized rover at $250 million, with delivery to the moon in 2022.
In a May 2024 blog post, Dan Andrews, VIPER project manager, shared that in April the lander passed a system test readiness review, allowing VIPER to move on to stress testing and environmental testing.
“These environmental tests are important because they force our rover to experience the conditions it will see during launch, landing and in the thermal operating environment of the lunar south pole,” Andrews wrote in May. “Specifically, acoustic tests will simulate the harsh, vibrational ‘rock concert’ experience of launch, while thermal-vacuum tests will expose VIPER to the hottest and coldest temperatures it will see during the mission while operating in the vacuum of space. It’s a tough business, but we have to make sure we’re ready for it.”
During his comments Wednesday, Kearns said that at this point, VIPER has not completed system-level environmental testing and that some ground systems necessary for the rover to operate on the Moon also have not been completed.
He said that by canceling VIPER, NASA would save a minimum of $84 million “which is the cost to continue to complete the path for flight and ground systems and then manage the mission that now cannot be accomplished in 2024.” “
When asked why this decision was being made after NASA had weathered budget increases of similar or larger amounts and not canceled programs, Kearns said that not only were they bound by congressional budget constraints, but that the projections cited they may not be the end of the story.
“One of the concerns we had was the immediate cost that we would have to take something else to NASA Science to prepare for the September 2025 landing, but another concern we had was that the landing would not happen in September 2025, and if it is held later than November, it will likely be held in 2026, which will likely require a similar amount of money to continue into 2026,” Kearns said.
A notable part of this timeline concern comes from the fact that Kearns said the Griffin lander would be ready no earlier than September 2025.
“We have also taken into account the fact that it may at least be possible to delay the availability of the Griffin lander for launch beyond September 2025. The Griffin lander itself will have to be able to launch by November 2025 or else it will miss VIPER science operations window for this 100-day post-landing mission,” Kearns said. “VIPER can only make its measurements under certain conditions at the South Pole, when there is a lot of sunlight available, which we call South Pole summer, and also a way to communicate directly by radio back to Earth.”
“That’s a challenge for any long-duration mission that’s going to go to the South Pole that doesn’t use, say, nuclear energy for heating and power,” Kearns added. “You have to be very careful how long you stay in the dark.”
what’s going on now
NASA will retain its $323 million contract with Astrobotic, allowing Griffin Mission One to move forward to launch in 2025. Kearns said the lander will now travel to the moon with a mass simulator that will weigh about the same as VIPER .
He added that Astrobotic may seek additional commercial payloads for the lander, and if necessary, the size of the mass simulator may be reduced to compensate.
“We have decided at NASA, given the scope and the schedule and the cost, the fixed price cost that we have negotiated with Astrobotic with the Griffin mission, that we are not going to replace additional science instruments on Griffin because we think that if we do, it could mean delaying the schedule and increased costs to the government,” Kearns said. “So our focus now on Griffin is to get the data from the successful landing on how their propulsion system works.”
When asked if VIPER could transition to another of NASA’s reserved lunar landers, such as the cargo version of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said it could have negative impact on the budget for other CLPS missions.
“It’s more about the cost risk and the threat to the rest of NASA’s program,” Fox said.
She said NASA has informed congressional appropriators of its decision and is awaiting their response.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Astrobotic said it aims to launch its Griffin lander in the third quarter of 2025. In April, the company announced it would launch its own shoebox-sized rover called the CubeRover. in partnership with the company, Mission Control, as part of the Griffin One mission.
The lander will also carry the LandCam-X payload on behalf of the European Space Agency and French startup Lunar Logistics Services. It was designed to “take pictures while approaching the Moon to improve the precision and safety of future lunar landings.”
Astrobotic has not yet published a full list of its commercial customers.
