Last week, Space News reported that NASA is postponing procurement of a commercially-developed lander that would deliver VIPER to the lunar surface, meaning that not only does VIPER not have a ride to the Moon right now, but that it’s not very clear when it’ll actually happen-as recently as last November, the plan was to have a lander selected by early February, for a landing in late 2022. If it seems a little weird that NASA cancelled Resource Prospector only to almost immediately start work on VIPER, well, yeah-the primary difference between the two rovers seems to be that VIPER is intended to spend several months operating, while Resource Prospector’s lifespan was only a couple of weeks.įinding water ice on the Moon is the first step towards the in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) robots necessary to practically sustain a long-term lunar mission Resource Prospector was also scheduled to go to the Moon’s south pole to look for water ice, and VIPER will be carrying some of the instruments originally developed for Resource Prospector. VIPER is more than somewhat similar to an earlier rover that NASA was working on called Resource Prospector, which was cancelled back in 2018. The final rover might look a bit more like this: In the video, the VIPER engineering model is enjoying playtime in simulated lunar regolith (not stuff that you want to be breathing, hence the fancy hats) to help characterize the traction of the wheels on different slopes, and to help figure out how much power will be necessary. About the size of a golf cart, VIPER is a mobile robot that will roam around the Moon’s South Pole looking for water ice in the region and for the first time ever, actually sample the water ice at the same pole where the first woman and next man will land in 2024 under the Artemis program. VIPER’s job is to noodle around the permanently shaded craters at the Moon’s south pole looking for water ice, which can (eventually) be harvested and turned into breathable air and rocket fuel.Īn engineering model of the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, is tested in the Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. As a sort of first-ish step, NASA is developing a new lunar rover called VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover). That’s great! Before that actually happens, a whole bunch of other things have to happen, and excitingly, many of those things involve robots. NASA has decided that humans are going back to the Moon.
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