2024-07-21 08:08:15
NASA announced yesterday, Wednesday, that it has stopped developing its Viper rover, which was scheduled to explore the South Pole of the Moon in search of water, attributing the decision to the high cost of the project, according to Agence France-Presse.
The US space agency has already spent $450 million on the rover, which was originally expected to cost just over $430 million. But the launch, originally scheduled for late 2023, can’t happen until 2025 at the earliest, pushing its total cost to more than $600 million.
In a press conference, NASA’s associate administrator for science, Nicholas Fox, described the decision to cancel the mission on the already assembled vehicle as “very difficult.”
NASA has announced a call for interested industrial and international partners to collaborate on the project. Otherwise, the space agency plans to disassemble the vehicle and recover certain components, including instruments, batteries and solar panels.
The rover was scheduled to launch on board the Griffin lunar lander developed by the American startup Astrobotic, whose first launch to the moon in January was inconclusive.
The probe’s second astronomical mission is still ongoing, and NASA will deliver an object with a mass similar to the rover’s, but without scientific benefit.
The lander was actually designed with this constraint in mind, and the space agency doesn’t want to risk further delaying launch by adding a new scientific payload. The goal now is to make sure Astrobotic can land on the moon.
The company said on Wednesday that it is counting on completing the launch process in the third quarter of 2025.
NASA has contracted several companies to send equipment and technology to the moon, under a program called CLPS, of which Astrobotic is a part. The goal is to study the lunar environment with the aim of sending humans back to the surface. It is possible to use water found on the site.
NASA said versions of three of the instruments on the VIPER will be included in other missions. A CLPS mission, called IM-2, is scheduled to launch by the end of the year and will be led by Intuitive Machines, which will also go to the South Pole and drill into lunar soil.
Finally, the rover that is expected to take astronauts to the moon in the future will be able to go to areas that never see sunlight, and are likely to contain water, by “the end of the decade,” according to a senior official at the US space agency, Joel Kearns.
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2024-07-21 08:08:15