NASA has canceled the VIPER project, its first robotic lunar rover mission, due to rising costs and delays. This decision, announced on Wednesday, July 17, aims to prevent disruptions in other missions within the agency’s commercial lunar payload service line.
“Decisions like this are never easy, and we’ve not made this one lightly,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. She explained that the projected expenses for VIPER would have forced NASA to cancel or disrupt other missions. Therefore, NASA decided to forego the VIPER mission to sustain the entire program.
VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, was designed to land at the moon’s South Pole and gather data over 100 days to understand potential resources like ice. The project was initially announced in 2019 and was scheduled to launch in May 2023. However, delays led to a rescheduled launch date of November 2024, and further schedule and supply chain issues pushed the mission to 2025.
Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration for the Science Mission Directorate, revealed that NASA spent $450 million on the mission through June. He noted that since 2021, VIPER’s costs exceeded the original commitment by more than 30%, triggering a cancellation review. Although the rover is fully assembled, it has not completed testing.
Despite canceling VIPER, NASA remains committed to lunar studies. “We are committed to continue to study the Moon and to look for water and ice in all of our future missions,” Fox said. Kearns added that the agency would seek “alternative methods” to verify the presence of ice at the lunar South Pole.
Featured Image courtesy of NASA
Follow us for more news on space explorations.