Posted on 07/18/2024 6:33:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
NASA has canceled its plan to land a robotic rover on the Moon to search for ice and other potential resources, after spending $450 million.
The plan involved landing what is dubbed the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, near the lunar South Pole, which scientists suspect may harbor ice.
It was planned for the mobile robot to spend 100 days scouting the area for ice deposits and producing a first-ever resource map, which NASA said was critical for its future Artemis missions to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon’s surface.
The decision to axe the VIPER project was announced on July 17 at a press call, with the space agency citing increased costs, delayed launch dates, and worries that future cost hikes could threaten its multi-billion-dollar program to hire private companies to deliver scientific instruments to the Moon. The VIPER was initially planned to be launched in late 2023 aboard a lander provided by Astrobotic Technology, but in 2022, NASA pushed the schedule back to late 2024 to provide more time for testing, the agency said. Since then, additional schedule and supply chain delays further pushed VIPER’s readiness date to September 2025.
In terms of costs, NASA said it has so far spent about $450 million on the program. Discontinuing VIPER is expected to save the agency at least $84 million in development and additional operational costs.
NASA officials stressed that the cancellation was due to a budgetary issue, not a technological one.
“First and most important, this is in no way a reflection on the quality of the work from the mission team that are working to build this rover,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “They have worked diligently, including through the pandemic, to be able to build this rover to look for water on the Moon.”
According to NASA, some instruments and components on VIPER might still make it to the Moon in other lunar robotic missions.
Prior to disassembly, the agency will wait until the end of July to see if any domestic industry and international partners want to use the existing VIPER rover system at their own expense.
Despite VIPER’s termination, NASA said it would pursue alternative methods to accomplish many of VIPER’s goals and determine whether there is ice at the lunar South Pole.
“The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years,” Ms. Fox told reporters. “Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.”
Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company, still plans to fly its Griffin lunar lander by the end of 2025. The company launched its first robotic mission to the Moon in January, but the lander crashed into the Earth’s atmosphere and burned up.
Ice on the moon. I thought it had no atmosphere?
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Atmosphere is not needed to form ice. Comets have lots of ice.
NASA has become pathetic. It’s NOT the NASA I grew up with.
Lava tube caves on the Moon have been know about for awhile.
Yes, but they located one in a very good piece of real estate.....Location! Location! Location! ..............
They could have just bought a small desert country or island somewhere and called it Palestine!
It is easy to spend other peoples money
The woke folks at NASA couldn’t decide the rover’s gender so they just cancelled the project.
LOL
5.56mm
What do they care? It’s not their money. There is always more.
I read they got a total of one day’s worth of food to the terrorists. I mean Palestinians.
This is not your father’s NASA, folks.
Hamas hijacked anything that came over the pier
But the “ genocidal” Israelis opened up and guarded land corridors that I believe delivered more supplies than before the 10/7 hamass terror war started
Yup—Artemis has been delayed year after year after year...
The hogs at the trough are busy collecting their contract payments—so might as well keep the scam going...
Not entirely true. Contractors have had to down size work force for the delays. Contracts are for deliverables, not standing work force. Programs like Artemis have phases and if run efficiently, would transition from phase to phase without gaps. When the govt decides to delay, they create gaps and contractors have to either find other contracts for the employees to work on or lay them off until the next phase is funded.
Artemis has lots of domestic deliverables that will be delivered.
The biggest delay is the European Space Agency piece.
Imho that will never get completed.
After wasting another $450 million taxpayer dollars, NASA scraps another project, payola was successfully completed though.
We’ve been gaslit since 1969. They killed Gus Grissom and team to silence his whistleblowing.
NASA once was able to send men to the moon and back now they can’t send a man to the woman’s bathroom without screwing it up. Houston we have a problem.
Looking for ice on the Lunar poles?!🤣🤣🤣🤣NASA can’t even get a pair of astronauts into low earth orbit safely. Their leaky spaceship may not be able to return to Earth and the astronauts may have to be rescued by The Russians or Elon….so looking for ice on the moon is decades? away for NASA (if ever) and will most likely be done by the Chinese
China beat them to the Moon’s South Pole. Xiden defers to China.
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