NASA Opts Out of a Planned Moon Rover Project

Whoever coined the phrase “everything old is new again” probably wasn’t thinking about lunar missions when they first said it. That said, we sure seem to be in the middle of a lunar renaissance, with numerous countries sending missions to the Moon, and some traveling to regions left unexplored during the previous heyday of missions there. The Moon’s South Pole is one such region, and NASA had an ambitious plan to explore it using a device called Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER for short.

The good news is that VIPER has been completed. The bad news is that NASA has decided to cancel the project. According to the space agency’s announcement, the reasons for the cancellation were “cost increases, delays to the launch date and the risks of future cost growth.” The announcement also states that NASA was concerned that VIPER’s costs could put other Commercial Lunar Payload Services projects at risk.

NASA plans to apply what they learned in building VIPER to other lunar missions — and may repurpose some of VIPER’s technology to the same end. “The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years,” said NASA’s Nicola Fox in a statement. “Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.”

If you’re wondering how much money was put into the project so far, Nature‘s Alix Soliman has an answer for you: $450 million.

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Based on NASA’s announcement, it does sound like the space agency has other means by which they can meet several of the goals associated with VIPER. This includes Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1, which is currently scheduled to arrive on the Moon later this year. VIPER may be off the table, but NASA’s search for polar ice remains a high priority.