The United States\u2019 space agency NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth about $190 million to deliver its VIPER rover to the lunar surface, giving new life to a mission previously shelved due to cost overruns and delays.<\/p>\n
Under the award, Blue Origin will transport the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard its uncrewed Blue Moon MK1 lander, targeting a landing near the lunar south pole in late 2027. The site is of particular interest to scientists who believe large stores of water ice may exist beneath the surface.<\/p>\n
The mission is part of NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which allows private companies to deliver science and technology payloads to the Moon. \u201cIt can\u2019t stop an incoming threat, but it can give us time to prepare,\u201d NASA said when explaining the importance of preparing early for lunar and deep-space challenges.<\/p>\n
The decision marks a shift from NASA\u2019s earlier partnership with Astrobotic, which was awarded the contract in 2020 but faced setbacks. In July 2024, NASA canceled the VIPER project, even though much of the hardware had been built. The move drew criticism from lawmakers and scientists, prompting the agency to seek new delivery options.<\/p>\n
For Blue Origin, the contract strengthens the role of its Blue Moon lander, which has also been selected for NASA\u2019s Artemis program to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface. This award gives the cargo version of the lander its first high-profile scientific payload and ties it to a fixed schedule.<\/p>\n
About the size of a golf cart, VIPER will spend around 100 days mapping and drilling the lunar surface to analyze water and other resources. The results are expected to support both NASA\u2019s scientific goals and its long-term ambitions for a human presence on the Moon, where locally sourced water could be converted into drinking water, oxygen, and even rocket fuel.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States\u2019 space agency NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth about $190 million to deliver its VIPER rover to the lunar surface, giving new life to a mission previously shelved due to cost overruns and delays. Under the award, Blue Origin will transport the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,137,190,1342],"class_list":["post-20610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-lunar","tag-nasa","tag-viper"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}