WASHINGTON \u2014 NASA estimated it would have to cancel up to four commercial lunar lander missions and delay up to four more to fly a rover mission the agency announced in July it planned to cancel.<\/p>
NASA announced in July its intent to cancel the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission<\/a>, citing cost and schedule overruns and concerns of additional costs and delays in its launch, which was scheduled for September 2025. The agency said at the time that if it continued VIPER, the additional costs would have affected other missions in the agency\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.<\/p> \u201cThe projected remaining expenses for VIPER would have resulted in either having to cancel or disrupt many other missions in our Commercial Lunar Payload Services line,\u201d Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said in a media briefing to announce the cancellation. However, the agency didn\u2019t specify how many missions would be affected if VIPER continued, either in that announcement or subsequent public events.<\/p> NASA, though, did quantify the impacts on the CLPS program in a response to a letter from the leadership of the House Science Committee in September<\/a> about the VIPER cancellation. The members write in the Sept. 6 letter that the cancellation \u201craises serious questions\u201d and asked NASA to respond to 17 specific questions about VIPER.<\/p> In its Oct. 11 response to the committee, obtained by SpaceNews through a Freedom of Information Act request, NASA outlined three scenarios for when and how VIPER would launch that the agency said would result in canceling between one and four CLPS missions.<\/p> In one scenario, NASA assumed VIPER would launch on Astrobotic\u2019s Griffin lander as previously planned in September 2025. The agency estimated it would need to spend $104 million to prepare VIPER itself, $20 million of which had already been allocated for activities in fiscal year 2024, along with $20 million in \u201cadditional risk mitigation activities\u201d for Griffin. \u201cNASA estimated that these additional funding requirements would lead to cancellation of one CLPS delivery and delay of another delivery by a year,\u201d it stated.<\/p> A second scenario anticipated a one-year slip in VIPER\u2019s launch to September 2026. NASA projected an additional $50 million in costs for VIPER and $40 million for Griffin. That would have resulted in two canceled CLPS task orders and a one-year delay to two others.<\/p> NASA also revealed it considered \u201calternative delivery means\u201d for VIPER other than Griffin. NASA did not disclose details about those alternatives, calling them \u201chighly proprietary\u201d but which would have delayed the launch of VIPER beyond 2026 \u201cand would still include significant uncertainty about the reliability of delivery success.\u201d NASA projected total costs of $350 million to $550 million with this scenario, resulting in the cancellation of four CLPS task orders and delaying three to four more by two years.<\/p> NASA elected to cancel VIPER than pursue any of those alternatives, in part because the agency appeared skeptical that VIPER could be ready for launch by September 2025. \u201cBased on delayed progress from design through rover assembly, programmatic analysis projects significant cost, schedule, and technical risk to finishing development,\u201d the agency stated in its response to Congress.<\/p> The rover, though, has completed environmental tests, which were ongoing at the time of the cancellation decision, without any serious issues. \u201cI\u2019ve been a part of a number of flight thermal-vac test campaigns, and this one was just absolutely incredible in how well it went,\u201d said Anthony Colaprete, VIPER project scientist, at an Oct. 29 meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG)<\/a>. \u201cEverything looks great so far.\u201d<\/p> NASA is instead pursuing plans to offer VIPER to commercial or industry partners. In its response to Congress, NASA said it received 52 responses to a call for \u201cexpressions of interest\u201d made when it announced the cancellation decision. The responses, NASA stated, \u201cranged from domestic companies and international agencies to backyard\/garage enthusiasts,\u201d with the agency concluding that 23 of the respondents had \u201cenough spaceflight experience and technical abilities to conduct the VIPER mission.\u201d<\/p> NASA subsequently issued a more formal request for information, receiving 11 responses. A NASA spokesperson said Oct. 30 that the agency was evaluating those responses and would \u201cpropose next steps by early 2025.\u201d<\/p> The agency told Congress it also heard from 11 international partners interested in VIPER. \u201cNASA reached out to each to gauge interest in partnering with NASA on completion of the VIPER mission. Four space agencies responded, and NASA expects to enter into one-on-one discussions with the agencies to determine feasibility,\u201d it stated. Those space agencies were the Australian Space Agency, German Aerospace Center, Israel Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).<\/p> NASA also stated it would consider flying VIPER\u2019s instruments on the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) that it is working with industry to develop for use on future Artemis missions as well as the larger pressurized rover that JAXA is providing. The LTV, though, won’t be ready until at least late this decade, while the JAXA rover is projected to launch no earlier than fiscal year 2032.<\/p> NASA\u2019s decision to cancel VIPER has been sharply criticized by both scientists and advocates of space commercialization, arguing that the rover offered the best near-term chance to identify and characterize water ice deposits thought to exist in permanently shadowed regions of craters at the lunar poles. Such deposits, if present and accessible, could benefit planetary science research and also support commercial activities at the moon.<\/p> VIPER \u201cwas our only opportunity to start learning whether the foundation of all of our excitement about the south polar region of the moon has merit or not,\u201d said Brent Sherwood, space domain lead at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, during a Nov. 12 panel discussion at the Beyond Earth Symposium on cislunar infrastructure.<\/p> \u201cLet\u2019s go find out what it is that we think makes the moon worthwhile at all,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s get the data. Until we have the data, everything else is just talk.\u201d<\/p>