VIPER (rover)

[8] VIPER was to be carried aboard Astrobotic's Griffin lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

[11] The agency still plans to support the Griffin lander to arrive on the Moon in fall of 2025, though with a mass simulator in place of the VIPER rover.

[12] NASA expects the primary objectives of VIPER to be fulfilled by an array of other missions planned for the next several years, but these may eventually become overshadowed and forgotten over time.

[15] On September 6th 2024, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology published a letter requesting additional information as to why NASA cancelled the mission.

[16] The VIPER rover has a size similar to a golf cart (around 1.4 × 1.4 × 2 m), and would have been tasked with prospecting for lunar resources, especially for water ice, mapping its distribution, and measuring its depth and purity.

[17] The VIPER rover was to operate on the western edge of Nobile crater on Mons Mouton in the Moon's south pole region.

[26] Later on 28 February 2024, VIPER Project Manager Dan Andrews announced that all the rover's scientific instruments were installed, and that it was more than 80% built.

[33] Water may have been delivered to the Moon over geological timescales by the regular bombardment of water-bearing comets, asteroids and meteoroids,[34] or continuously produced in situ by the hydrogen ions (protons) of the solar wind impacting oxygen-bearing minerals.

NASA's VIPER assembled at Johnson Space Center, when it was canceled
Artist's conception of the VIPER rover on the Moon (Image courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center)
Orbital survey of the Moon taken by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument on India 's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter. Blue shows the spectral signature of hydroxide , green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the Sun and red shows a mineral called pyroxene .
The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon's south pole (left) and north pole (right) as viewed by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M 3 ) spectrometer onboard India's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter.
Proposed landing site of the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover ( VIPER )
The NIRVSS instrument