NASA’s VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) mission to water ice at the Moon’s South Pole could be scrapped as costs rocket and delays mount. Only recently, and despite the rover having just passed its critical acoustic tests, with a budget overrun of more than 30 percent, NASA announced its intention to scrub the mission. Congress will have the final word, but so far, it has yet to respond to NASA’s notification.
Announced in 2019 by then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, the VIPER project was initially pegged at $250 million. The budget now stands at $609.6 million, with the landing date slipping from 2023 to September 2025. This huge cost increase triggered an automatic cancellation review, held last month.
NASA has already sunk $450 million into VIPER, and scrubbing the mission would save only $84 million if it launches in 2025, according to Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for the Exploration Science Strategy Integration Office. Further delays, he said, could add more cost overruns to the program should technical issues arise with environmental testing or the lander being developed by Astrobotic, a company based in Pittsburgh.
VIPER is already undergoing environmental tests at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, having finished vibration and acoustic tests. The project scientist, Anthony Colaprete, said in a recent talk at NASA’s Exploration Science Forum that the thermal vacuum test would start on August 21, and nothing major is expected to come up.
The lander that will deliver VIPER to the Moon is called Griffin, and it’s part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Astrobotic did run its first CLPS mission earlier this year, but that rocket failed to reach the Moon, putting a big question mark next to Griffin’s readiness. Kearns repeated that the earliest date for which Griffin will be ready is September 2025, and further delays mean increasing VIPER costs.
Colaprete advised placing the rover in storage and reducing the team to a skeletal force of individuals. NASA is passing the program on to other firms or international partners without extra cost to the U.S. government. The deadline it puts, according to its statement, for expressions of interest is August 1. It says that if there are no acceptable offers, NASA will disassemble the rover and repurpose its scientific instruments for future missions.
The proposed cancelation has engendered a huge reaction from the lunar science community. According to Clive Neal, a planetary geologist at the University of Notre Dame, the idea of disassembling VIPER is “absurd given the investment already put into it by NASA.” He called on NASA to retain the full test schedule because a fully tested rover would be more attractive to potential partners.
The decision of NASA is also criticized for possibly giving away the lead in exploring lunar resources. “VIPER is 100% built and has completed part of its testing. It is ready to go, and NASA is junking a very capable rover,” Neal said. Norbert Schörghofer of the Planetary Science Institute, a senior scientist, pointed out how important the mission was in spotting water ice inside the polar regions of the Moon, stating that cancelation would be a gigantic loss to science.
It has certainly put the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group in a sweat, with engineers and scientists working on VIPER. According to LEAG chair Benjamin Greenhagen, the community has been behind VIPER and its precursor, Resource Prospector, for quite some time now, begging NASA to reverse its decision.
An open letter to Congress, signed by over 140 scientists from more than 24 states, urges lawmakers to oppose NASA’s termination of VIPER. This letter will explain that it would be unprecedented and indefensible to scrap such a project at this point—after an investment of $450 million.
While VIPER may be scrubbed, NASA isn’t: the space agency is mashing down on its CLPS program with a raft of missions, including PRIME-1 and other lunar landers, in the pipeline over the next few years.
With NASA now waiting for Congress’s reaction, the future is precarious for VIPER, with the lunar science community put on high alert and left feeling let down.