The already-built rover could now be scrapped for parts

NASA cancels $450-million mission to drill for ice on the Moon — surprising researchers

The already-built rover could now be scrapped for parts

NASA has terminated an ambitious mission intended to map ice and then drill into it at the Moon’s south pole. The space agency announced the cancellation of the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) yesterday, citing budget woes, rising costs and several delays in construction on the rover and its lander. Now, it is seeking partners interested in using the rover — which is already assembled — or components of it, for future lunar missions.

The agency has already sunk US$450 million into building VIPER, and reports that it would need to spend millions more to complete testing. This would threaten funding for other launches it is planning as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which the agency partners with private US aerospace companies to transport scientific instruments to the lunar surface. Before the mission delays, VIPER was intended to be the first-ever mission to scout for ice on the ground at the Moon’s south pole.

“This has been a really tough decision, which we make in an uncertain budget environment,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate when announcing the cancellation. “But we do believe that this is a way for us to continue to support the entire CLPS portfolio.” The US Congress reduced NASA’s budget for 2024 compared with 2023, and the budget proposed for 2025 by the US House of Representatives is only about a 1% increase from this year, which is lower than the current rate of inflation.

Delayed, then doomed

The US Congress approved $433.5 million to build VIPER and land it on the Moon by the end of 2023. The idea was to sample ice in the dark, cold craters at the lunar south pole, with the aim of extracting the chemical data trapped inside it, to learn more about the origin and formation of the Solar System. The ice might also one day serve as a rocket-fuel ingredient for future astronauts who land there. But delays building the rover and the commercial lander that would deliver it to the Moon pushed the launch date into late 2025, with an estimated cost rise of $176 million, according to Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA in the science directorate. Such a cost spike automatically triggers an internal agency review, which was completed in June.

NASA officials say they remain confident in Astrobotic, the aerospace company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that is building the lander for this mission. In January, Astrobotic’s Peregrine spacecraft, meant to be the first US Moon lander in 50 years, leaked propellant, tumbled out of control and never made it to the lunar surface. Some members of the scientific community are sceptical of the agency’s statement.

“I think there were major concerns with Astrobotic’s ability to deliver [VIPER] safely to the surface,” says Kevin Cannon, a lunar geologist at Ethos Space, a lunar infrastructure startup based in Los Angeles, California. “It’s disappointing.”

Astrobotic is still eager to launch its Griffin lunar lander next year, despite VIPER no longer being onboard. The firm is soliciting proposals for other exploratory equipment it can shuttle to the Moon instead. “The decisions must be made quickly, but we’re considering all options,” said John Thornton, Astrobotic’s chief executive, in an e-mail to Nature.

Uncertain future

VIPER had just started going through testing to ensure that it could handle the vibrations, temperature conditions and vacuum of space. Now, NASA is accepting proposals from interested parties to use the rover in its current state. Otherwise, it will dismantle the craft and repurpose the components for other missions.

“The fact that they would disassemble a fully complete rover that’s currently in testing, that was pretty surprising,” says Benjamin Greenhagen, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. It would seem more likely for NASA to put the rover in storage, he says, rather than scrap it entirely.

“Despite what’s happening with VIPER, we are committed to continuing to study the Moon and to look for water and ice in all of our future missions,” Fox said during the 17 July announcement. NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) is still scheduled to fly to the Moon later this year on a commercial lander built by the aerospace firm Intuitive Machines in Houston, Texas, as part of the CLPS programme. Intuitive Machines successfully landed a spacecraft at the lunar south pole in February, although the craft tipped over and ended up collecting limited data. Like VIPER, PRIME-1 will search for ice and drill into the Moon’s surface.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02361-1

This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:Alix Soliman