Sorry, Viper Fans: NASA Won’t Be Digging For Moon Ice Anytime Soon

Space agencies and private companies around the world are looking to the moon as a destination for clues about the cosmos as well as a potential source of valuable resources. But one major mission being pursued by NASA has been abruptly called off.

A little background

The program was known as the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (or Viper) and had been designed to search for ice deposits on the lunar surface. Here are a few of the highlights from the now-defunct mission:

• The entire expedition was scheduled to last 100 days
• A 1,000-pound mobile robot would’ve done the drilling
• NASA wanted to create a map of potential ice deposits

If it had advanced as planned, Viper would’ve been a pivotal step toward NASA’s next manned mission to the moon. Several startup companies that want to eventually conduct their own resource mining on the moon are also missing out on the data that Viper might have made available.

But like many lofty space-exploration plans before it, this program quickly exceeded its budget and took a lot longer than expected to build due to frequent delays.

$450 million later

Even as the agency began putting the final pieces in place, it became clear to NASA administrators that it was not in the agency’s best interest to continue sinking money into the program.

After spending nearly half a billion dollars on Viper, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Joel Kearns said that all won’t be lost upon scrapping the mission. Many of the instruments and parts used on the robot and related systems can be repurposed for other projects.

But in the end, the agency determined that continuing the Viper project “would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other [Commercial Lunar Payload Services] missions.”

Chris Agee July 19th, 2024

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