In the project discontinuation declaration made on July 17, 2024, NASA asked for an expression of interest in the VIPER mission continuation to U.S. industry with a submission deadline of August 1. On August 9, 2024, NASA issued an official Request for Information for a “VIPER Rover Partnership Opportunity,” enlarging the audience to U.S. communities in general.
Today, @NASA issued a Request for Information to hear from American companies and institutions about what science they could accomplish and how they might conduct a mission using the agency's VIPER Moon rover. Learn more: https://t.co/Z4KmPmb6KE pic.twitter.com/UiVlMoCtTk
— NASA Ames (@NASAAmes) August 9, 2024
With this partnership, NASA aims to fulfill VIPER’s scientific objectives without adding other expenses to their $433.5 million mission budget, including the launch costs. The new mission owner will have the chance to propose additional goals and learn from NASA’s expertise to handle such a technologically and operationally advanced project.
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The lunar volatiles-hunting rover
The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission aimed to accomplish many lunar exploration tasks on the South Pole of the Moon, like finding water ice and discovering the form in which it accumulated. To reach these objectives, NASA equipped the rover with several scientific instruments, like different spectrometers and a 1-meter drill, The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT).
Its size is similar to a golf cart (~1.5m x 1.5m x 2.0m), the mass is around 500 kg, and the battery system allows the mission to last for about 100 Earth days with up to 50 hours of darkness and 9 hours of operations/observations in Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs), the most promising for the presence of ice water volatiles.
Before the project cancellation, the launch schedule was for the fall of 2025 aboard the Astrobotic Griffin Lunar lander, which NASA will continue to support by paying for the launch of a mass simulator included in the mission budget.
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An attempt to rescue VIPER from disassembly
In the project cancellation statement, NASA declared the will to disassemble the rover to use its scientific instruments for other purposes in case of a lack of external interest in the mission. Giving a chance to a different entity to continue the rover journey is an attempt to preserve what has been done and spent so far and reach the initial scientific objectives.
NASA will pay for the next mission steps, including the rover’s Thermal Vacuum Chamber (TVAC) testing, which should be over by the end of October 2024, certifying the rover to fly in space. The external investor should take care of the possible fixes after TVAC testing, the maintenance of the rover until launch, the integration on landers different than Astrobotic Griffin and the related launch costs, the ground operations, and even paying NASA to use the agency’s facilities and resources.
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