It’s a classic waiting moment of the Moon.
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 has identified sticker shock, launch date delays and the risk of future cost increases as reasons to “terminate” the lunar ice chaser mission.
Some disassembly required
At this point in timeNASA invested $450 million in VIPER.
NASA has said it plans to dismantle and reuse VIPER instruments and components for future lunar missions.
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 perform an “orderly shutdown by spring 2025,” NASA said.
Related: NASA cancels $450 million VIPER lunar rover amid budget concerns
Dead meat, dead weight
As part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) public-private partnership, VIPER aimed Earth departure via an Astrobotic Griffin Moon Lander.
But Astrobotic is trying to overcome its own problems that 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 the missing NASA rover.
Rocky is off to a smooth sailing start
It wasn’t smooth sailing for Astrobotic at first.
In January of this year Astrobotic Peregrine Mission One to Moon failed due to propulsion malfunction in space.
An accident investigation into why a private company’s first lunar lander failed is imminent, Astrobotic said.
“Continuing VIPER would result in increased costs that threaten to cancel or interrupt other CLPS missions,” the space agency’s statement explained. “NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent.”
Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, added in a statement:
“The agency has a series of missions planned to search for ice and other resources on the moon over the next five years.”
Ceding management
“VIPER is 100 percent built and has completed some of its testing. It’s ready to go, and NASA is launching a very capable rover and giving up leadership in resource exploration,” said Clive Neal, a leading lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
“It is a dark day for lunar science and exploration, and perhaps for Artemis program“I am still shocked by the reasoning used to justify the cancellation of VIPER.
Norbert Schörghofer, Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, research focuses 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 lunar polar regions a “science and exploration priority.”
“The cancellation of VIPER is a great loss for science,” Schörghofer told Space.com. “No other robotic US mission to the moon in the next three years has the necessary capabilities. What is required is mobility and a way to explore the subsurface, not just the surface.”
The ground truth
Schörghofer added that the real-world search for lunar water ice is likely to be carried out by Japan’s Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) project, which is now underway with India and is 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 Pole could reach its destination, but who’s to say it will fly as planned,” Schörghofer said.
“If anyone is serious about looking for ice on the moon, we also need a mission that can explore the 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 more distant in the future,” said Schörghofer.
Devastating news
The intended termination of VIPER is devastating news, said Benjamin Greenhagen, chairman 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,” Greenhagen advised his fellow lunar explorers via the Lunar-L community site. “We believe in this mission and the unique value it brings to lunar exploration, which will be lost if VIPER does not fly.”
Uncertain situation
In addition to the hardware, Greenhagen said that “VIPER is human and should have considerable interest in the engineers and scientists working to test and drive the completed rover given the uncertain situation. Please keep the VIPER team in mind.”
Greenhagen said that “LEAG will be working to get this report to NASA in the coming weeks, and I expect there will be other individual and community organized efforts as well.”
One such event has already started.
In light of news of NASA’s decision to cancel the VIPER mission, space scientists have drafted a letter of support, signed on the dotted line, to be sent to members of the US Congress, urging them to reconsider their decision.
Against ending NASA
In an open letter to Congress, the communiqué asks lawmakers to reject NASA’s cancellation of the VIPER Moon mission.
This open letter already has over 140 signatures from over 24 states in the United States. Plans are to reach out directly to the House and Senate committees addressed in the letter and ask them to oppose NASA’s termination of VIPER.
“We are deeply troubled by NASA’s shocking announcement on July 17 that it intends to abort the VIPER lunar rover mission,” the letter said. “VIPER was intended 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 points out 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-effective solutions or alternatives to breaking up or scrapping the rover.”
The VIPER rover is already fully built, the letter said, and was due to undergo final testing in the coming months before being launched on the market in 2024-2025.
“The decision to cancel the project at this stage, after spending 450 million dollars,” the paper claims, “is unprecedented and indefensible.”