It is a classic moment of waiting for the moon.
Message from NASA last week: “NASA is ending Project VIPER and continues with the exploration of the Moon. “
The assignment of the agency’s volatile research polar exploration rover (VIPER) has undergone a thorough internal review. NASA has discovered reasons to “suspend” the Ice-Hound lunar mission.
At the time, NASA had invested $450 million in VIPER.
NASA has announced plans to disassemble and reuse VIPER tools and parts for long-duration lunar missions.
Prior to decommissioning, NASA is open to expressions of interest from U. S. and foreign partners for the use of the existing VIPER rover system, at no cost to the government.
The VIPER mission will cause an “orderly shutdown through spring 2025,” NASA said.
Related: NASA cancels $450 million VIPER lunar rover due to problems
As part of the public-private component of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Cargo Services (CLPS), VIPER headed toward Earth’s decay via a Griffin Moon astrobotic lander.
But the Astrobotic company seeks to overcome its own disorders that have led Griffin to be able to fly until September 2025.
The onboard landing VIPER “will allow for an in-flight demonstration of the Griffin lander and its engines,” NASA said. In the absence of VIPER, a “mass simulator” will be used to mimic the weight of NASA’s defunct rover.
To begin with, things have not been easy for Astrobotic.
In January of this year, the Astrobotic Peregrine One project to the Moon failed due to a problem with propulsion.
Astrobotic said an investigation into the accidents will be conducted soon and determine why the company’s first lunar lander failed.
“The continuation of VIPER would lead to higher prices that would threaten to cancel or disrupt other CLPS missions,” the area agency said. “NASA has informed Congress of the agency’s intent. “
Nicola Fox, administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, added in a statement:
“The company is planning a series of missions to search for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years. “
“VIPER is 100 percent built and has finished some of its testing. It’s in a position to approve it and NASA is abandoning a very capable rover and ceding its leadership in resource exploration,” said Clive Neal, a leading lunar scientist at the University. of Notre Dame in Indiana.
“This is a dark day for lunar science and exploration and for the Artemis program,” Neal told Space. com. “I’m still shocked by the reasoning used to justify canceling VIPER. “
Norbert Schörghofer, a senior scientist at the Institute for Planetary Sciences, focuses his studies on the formation of water ice in the moon’s polar regions.
Schörghofer considers identifying the abundance and distribution of water ice at the lunar pole to be a “scientific and exploration priority. “
“The cancellation of VIPER is a fundamental loss for science,” Schörghofer told Space. com. “No other U. S. robot project to go to the moon in the next three years has these capabilities. It needs mobility and a way to explore the subsoil, just the surface. “
The search for lunar water ice on the lunar surface, Schörghofer added, will likely be led by Japan’s Lunar Polar Exploration Project (LUPEX), currently underway with India, scheduled to launch in 2025. NASA and the European Union The European Space Agency (ESA) will also be installed on the LUPEX mobile.
Or mandatory detection paintings on lunar water ice, Schörghofer said, could be realized via China’s Chang’e-7 lander in 2026.
“A manned project towards the south polar region can achieve this goal, but who is to say that it will fly as planned,” Schörghofer said.
“If we want to locate ice on the Moon, we also want a project that can explore large, cold, dark craters all the time, which not even VIPER and [the NASA crew] Artemis 3 could reach. And that even turns out to be the case. ” more in the future,” said Schörghofer.
The expected end of VIPER is devastating news, said Benjamin Greenhagen, president of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG).
Since 2004, LEAG has assisted NASA by providing research on scientific, technical, commercial, and operational problems in lunar exploration targets.
“The LEAG network has long supported VIPER and Resource Prospector,” Greenhagen pleaded with fellow lunar explorers via the network’s publishing website, Lunar-L. “We are in this project and in the exclusive price it brings to lunar exploration, which will be lost. “if VIPER doesn’t fly. “
Beyond the hardware, Greenhagen said that “VIPER is about other people and there is a primary fear for engineers and scientists rushing to verify and fly the finished rover given the dubious situation. Please keep the VIPER team in mind. “
Greenhagen said that “LEAG will work to convey this message to NASA in the coming weeks and I hope there will be other individual and network efforts as well. “
One of those movements has already begun.
In light of the announcement of NASA’s decision to cancel the VIPER mission, local scientists have drafted a letter to send to members of the United States Congress, urging them to reconsider their decision.
In an open letter to Congress, he calls on lawmakers to reject NASA’s cancellation of the VIPER mission to the Moon.
This open letter already has more than 140 signatures from more than 24 states in the United States. Plans are underway to contact the House and Senate committees addressed in the letter, asking them to oppose NASA’s termination of VIPER.
“We are deeply involved with NASA’s shocking announcement on July 17 that it intends to abort the assignment of the VIPER lunar rover,” the letter said. “VIPER will be a groundbreaking U. S. mission and NASA’s first mission to characterize the origin and distribution of water ice on and below the surface of the Moon, a key step in enabling human exploration. . . “
— NASA reveals the landing on the moon of the VIPER rover chasing the ice
— The failure of the Peregrine personal lunar lander probably wouldn’t impede NASA’s ambitious lunar advertising program.
— NASA selects nine corporations to expand “commercial services” concepts on Mars
The open letter states that the resolution to cancel the project “was made through NASA without giving the broader VIPER team or the lunar exploration network the opportunity to come up with cost-effective responses or dismember or scrap the rover. “
The VIPER rover is now fully built, the letter notes, and is expected to undergo final testing in the coming months before its launch in 2024-2025.
“The decision to cancel the allocation at this time, after spending $450 million,” the letter says, “is unprecedented and indefensible. “
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Leonard David is an award-winning space journalist who has been reporting on space activities for more than 50 years. Currently writing as a Space Insider columnist on Space. com, among other tasks, Leonard is a writer of books on space exploration, missions to Mars and more, the most recent being “Moon Rush: The New Space Race”, published in 2019 via from National Geographic. He also wrote “Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet,” published in 2016 through National Geographic. Leonard has served as a correspondent for SpaceNews, Scientific American, and Aeroarea America for the AIAA. He has won awards, including the inaugural Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Space Flight History in 2015 at the AAS Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium. You can check out Leonard’s most recent assignment on his online page and on Twitter.
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