NASA Provides More Details to Congress about VIPER Decision

NASA has provided more details of its decision to cancel the VIPER robotic lunar rover mission in response to a letter from a key House committee.  It doesn’t specifically answer how it now will obtain the data VIPER was to glean, but offers some insight into the agency’s surprise decision to terminate a spacecraft that was already built and partially through pre-launch tests, yet continue the $323 million services contract to land it on the Moon.

On July 17, 2024, NASA announced it was terminating VIPER, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. The rover is designed to roam around the lunar South Pole for 100 days searching for water ice with scientific instruments and a 1-meter (3.3-foot) drill. Previous NASA probes have detected evidence that water, possibly deposited by comets over the eons, exists in permanently shadowed regions at the Moon’s poles. VIPER was to be a step in creating the first lunar water resource map.

At the time, the agency said it was concerned about cost overruns due in part to delays in development of a commercial lander, Griffin, by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic.  The failure of Astrobotic’s first attempt to deliver NASA payloads to the lunar surface in January 2024 on a smaller Astrobotic lander, Peregrine, because of a propulsion system failure sparked NASA requirements for additional tests. That increased costs and delayed launch for another year to September 2025, but the agency is not convinced it will be ready even then, which would mean more delays and overruns.

NASA decided to pull the plug on the rover, but continue to pay Astrobotic the full $323 million under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Task Order 20A to land Griffin at the lunar South Pole even though VIPER will not be aboard. NASA offered to pay for a mass simulator to take the place of VIPER, but it’s not clear if Astrobotic wants it. The lander belongs to Astrobotic and it could find alternative customers. The CLPS program is designed to facilitate commercial lunar services and all companies with CLPS contracts are expected to find non-NASA customers to close their business cases.

On September 6, the bipartisan space leadership of the House Science, Space, and Technology (SS&T) Committee — Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) and Ranking Member Zoe Lofren (D-CA) along with space subcommittee Chairman Brian Babin (R-TX) and Ranking Member Eric Sorensen (D-IL) — wrote to NASA with a series of questions about the decision.

NASA replied on October 11, but neither the agency nor the committee released it. Each side said it was the other party’s decision as to whether to make it public. Space News obtained a copy from NASA after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and the committee subsequently provided a copy to SpacePolicyOnline.com.

The response was sent as an attachment to letters to each of the four committee members.

One of the questions is what benefits the government derives from paying the full $323 million for Astrobotic’s lunar delivery services since VIPER will not be delivered.

NASA replied that landing Griffin — albeit without VIPER — would “show that 500 kg class landers can land in the lunar polar region, which would benefit all NASA space mission directorates.”  In addition, NASA is interested in the technical viability of Griffin’s “pulse modulated bipropellant propulsion system” and completing the Task Order would help demonstrate Astrobotic’s capability “for future CLPS missions and, potentially, reduce risk to future CLPS awards.”

The $323 million services contract with Astrobotic is in addition to the cost of VIPER. In July, NASA said it had already spent $450 million on VIPER, not including the services contract, and would save $84 million by canceling it.

As of last month, VIPER had completed all three of its pre-launch tests — acoustic, vibration, and thermal vacuum.

NASA emphasized in July that its intent is to cancel VIPER while acknowledging congressional acquiescence is required. NASA also invited non-NASA entities to respond to a Request for Information (RFI) on how to get VIPER to the Moon without additional NASA funding. The evaluation of RFI responses is still underway and Congress has not completed action on NASA’s FY2025 budget request. In the meantime, NASA said it has “not begun an orderly shutdown of the project.”

During Senate Appropriations Committee markup of NASA’s request, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)  said she was “very disappointed” at NASA’s decision to cancel VIPER and asked that committee leaders “work with me as the bill moves forward to look for ways to repurpose the lander portion of this mission to advance Moon to Mars objectives.” West Virginia is partnered with Astrobotic’s home state of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the Keystone State Collaborative to support the space industry in the tri-state area.

If VIPER continues as a NASA project, the agency said an additional $45 million will be needed in FY2025 on top of the requested $33 million, and another $39 million in FY2026. If the launch slips past September 2025 “substantial additional funding in FY26 and later years would be required.” One of NASA’s concerns is what happens to future CLPS missions if money is diverted to continue VIPER. NASA’s original plan was to launch two CLPS missions per year from several vendors. Astrobotic’s Peregrine was first in January, followed by Intuitive Machines’ mostly successful Odysseus in February. Next is Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost in January 2025 and then another Intuitive Machines mission the next month.

Before it was canceled, NASA heralded VIPER as providing “critical information” that will “teach us about the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and help determine how we can harvest the Moon’s resources for future human space exploration.”  The lunar science community is raising questions about how that data will be obtained without VIPER.

In the letter, NASA says VIPER “is not the only investment in NASA’s overall science strategy for addressing volatiles and resource characterization on the lunar surface.” After listing a number of upcoming CLPS missions, the agency concedes, however, they “are not designed to return VIPER’s exact dataset.” Instead, NASA will “gain insights over time into the majority of VIPER’s original core science objectives.”