This is a classic lunar moment of waiting.
The message from NASA last week: “NASA Ends VIPER Project, Continues Lunar Exploration.”
The space agency’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) project has undergone a comprehensive internal review. NASA found that price sticker shock, launch date delays and the risk of future cost increases were reasons to “terminate” the lunar ice hound mission.
A little disassembly is required
At this moment in timeNASA has invested $450 million in VIPER.
NASA said it plans to disassemble and reuse VIPER’s instruments and components for future missions to the moon.
Prior to dismantling, NASA is open to expressions of interest from US industry and international partners to use the existing VIPER rover system at no cost to the government.
The VIPER project will conduct an “orderly shutdown by the spring of 2025,” NASA said.
Connected: NASA cancels $450 million VIPER rover due to budget issues
Dead meat, dead weight
Under NASA’s Public-Private Partnership for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), VIPER targeted the The Earth departure via an Astrobotic Griffin Moon Lander.
But Astrobotic is trying to overcome its own problems that have pushed Griffin’s flight readiness to September 2025.
The landing without VIPER on board “will provide a flight demonstration of the Griffin lander and its engines,” NASA said. In the absence of VIPER, a “mass simulator” will be used to mimic the weight of NASA’s missing rover.
Rocky is off to a smooth sailing start
Let’s start by saying that things are not going smoothly for Astrobotic.
In January of this year Astrobotic Peregrine Mission One to The moon failed due to space propulsion error.
An accident investigation is underway into why the private company’s first lunar lander failed, Astrobotic said.
“Continuing VIPER would result in increased costs that threaten to cancel or disrupt other CLPS missions,” the space agency’s statement explained. “NASA notified Congress of agency intent.”
Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., added in a statement:
“The agency has a set of planned missions to search for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years.”
Giving up leadership
“VIPER is 100% built and has completed some of its testing. It’s ready to go, and NASA is throwing out a very capable rover and giving up leadership in resource exploration,” said Clive Neal, lead lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
“This is a dark day for lunar science and exploration, and perhaps Artemis program” Neal told Space.com. “I’m still in shock at the reasoning used to justify the cancellation of VIPER.”
Norbert Schörghofer, a senior scientist at the Institute for Planetary Sciences, has a research focus on the study of water ice in the polar regions of the Moon.
Schörghofer calls identifying the abundance and distribution of water ice in the moon’s polar regions a “scientific and research priority.”
“The cancellation of VIPER is a great loss for science,” Schörghofer told Space.com. “No other robotic U.S. mission to the Moon in the next three years has the necessary capabilities. You need mobility and a way to explore the subsurface, not just the surface.”
A fundamental truth
The ground-based hunt for lunar water ice, Schörghofer added, will likely be done by Japan’s Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) project, now underway with India and expected to launch in 2025. Observing equipment from NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) will also be installed on the LUPEX rover.
Or perhaps the necessary detective work on lunar water ice, Schörghofer said, could be done by China’s Chang’e-7 robotic lander in 2026.
“A manned mission to the south polar region may achieve the goal, but who can say it will fly on schedule,” Schörghofer said.
“If anyone is serious about finding ice on the Moon, we also need a mission that can explore large permanently cold and dark craters that even VIPER and [NASA’s crewed] Artemis 3 will not be able to reach. And that seems to be even further into the future,” Schörghofer said.
Devastating news
The planned termination of VIPER is devastating news, said Benjamin Greenhagen, chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG).
Since 2004, LEAG has supported NASA in providing analysis of scientific, technical, commercial and operational issues in support of lunar exploration goals.
“The LEAG community has long supported VIPER and Resource Prospector before it,” Greenhagen advised his fellow lunar explorers via the Lunar-L community publication website. “We believe in this mission and the unique value it brings to lunar exploration that will be lost if VIPER does not fly.”
Uncertain situation
Beyond the hardware, Greenhagen said, “VIPER is human, and there should be significant concern for the engineers and scientists working to test and operate the finished rover given the uncertain situation. Please keep the VIPER team in mind.’
Greenhagen posted that “LEAG will be working to convey this message to NASA in the coming weeks, and I expect there will be other individual and community-organized efforts.”
One such action has already begun.
In light of the news of NASA’s decision to cancel the VIPER mission, space scientists have drafted a dotted-line letter of support to be sent to members of the US Congress, urging them to reconsider the decision.
Opposing the termination of NASA
In an open letter to Congress, the communiqué asks lawmakers to reject NASA’s cancellation of the VIPER Moon mission.
This open letter now has over 140 signatures from more than 24 states in the United States. Plans are underway to reach out directly to the House and Senate committees addressed in the letter, asking them to oppose NASA’s termination of VIPER.
“We are deeply concerned by NASA’s shocking announcement on July 17 that it intends to terminate the VIPER lunar rover mission,” the letter said. “VIPER was to be a groundbreaking American project and the first NASA mission to characterize the origin and distribution of water ice on and below the surface of the Moon, a key step in enabling human exploration…”
Unprecedented, indefensible
The open letter states that the decision to cancel the mission “was made by NASA without giving the broader VIPER team or the lunar exploration community an opportunity to propose cost-saving solutions or alternatives to disassembling or scrapping the rover.” .
The VIPER rover is now fully built, the letter noted, and is scheduled to undergo final tests in the coming months before launch in 2024-2025.
“The decision to cancel the project at this stage, after $450 million has been spent,” the letter said, “is both unprecedented and indefensible.”
