Intuitive Machines officials said they were creating a coalition of organizations ready to take on the rescue of the VIPER rover. It is planned to be sent to the Moon on one of the company’s vehicles.
Save the VIPER lunar rover
VIPER was the first lunar rover built by NASA. It was planned to be landed in one of the moon’s southern circumpolar craters using the Griffin descent platform built by Astrobotic. The main task of the spacecraft was to study the regolith in order to determine the percentage of water ice in it. For this purpose, the lunar rover was equipped with a drill, allowing it to extract samples from a depth of up to a meter, and tools for its analysis.
By the summer of 2024, engineers had completed the VIPER assembly. Later, NASA announced the project’s closure. The decision was motivated by budgetary considerations. NASA stated that the project budget increased by more than 30% compared to the approved estimate. That said, due to delays on Astrobotic’s part, VIPER could not be launched until September 2025 or earlier. NASA accountants calculated that closing the project now would save $84 million dollars.
The news about the termination of work on VIPER caused a storm of criticism against NASA. Many scientists felt that the decision not to launch an already completed lunar rover due to rather dubious economics was a big mistake. They were also skeptical of NASA’s proposal to disassemble VIPER and put its instruments on other lunar landers, explaining that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill its original missions. In this situation, the organization has issued a request for information to obtain proposals from companies and organizations interested in continuing work on VIPER without additional countries from NASA.
Intuitive Machines Coalition
And NASA got at least one response. On August 13, Intuitive Machines executives said they were interested in VIPER and were creating a coalition of companies, scientific organizations and international partners ready to take the project into their own hands.
Now the company’s specialists are calculating the necessary work and how much it will cost to prepare the VIPER for the flight. According to the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, the $84 million amount announced by NASA is a government figure, not a commercial one, and will actually turn out to be not so significant.
Intuitive Machines plans to use the Nova-D vehicle, which is still in development, to deliver the lunar rover. It will be able to land up to 1,500 kilograms of cargo on the lunar surface. Since VIPER has a mass of 500 kg, the company plans to offset the cost of launching VIPER by placing commercial cargo on the platform.
Intuitive Machines expects to receive a response to its proposal from NASA in late September. If it is positive, VIPER can go to the Moon in late 2027.
According to Spacenews
