The search for ice at the Moon\u2019s poles has loomed large in the field of lunar science since an instrument on an Indian satellite discovered water molecules inside shadowed crater floors more than a decade ago. NASA is now assembling a golf cart-size rover to drive into the dark polar craters to search for ice deposits that could be used by future astronauts to make their own rocket propellant and breathable air.<\/p>\n
\u201cA large group of people have been working on this idea for 10-plus years,\u201d said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist for NASA\u2019s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, engineers at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston started building the rover\u2019s chassis. In June, the space agency formally approved VIPER\u2019s team to move into full-scale assembly and testing ahead of the rover\u2019s scheduled launch in November 2024.<\/p>\n
The four-wheel rover looks different compared to NASA\u2019s nuclear-powered robots exploring Mars. VIPER is designed to drive into dark craters, places where sunlight hasn\u2019t reached for billions of years. Scientists have detected evidence that those cold, shadowed crater floors harbor water ice at or near the surface, where it could be harvested by astronauts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it goes into dark places, it is the first rover with headlights,\u201d Colaprete said Tuesday in a presentation at the NASA Exploration Science Forum. The LED headlights will cast a blue tint on the Moon\u2019s charcoal-colored landscape.<\/p>\n
VIPER will also be operated differently than NASA\u2019s Mars rovers. It takes a radio signal between 5 to 20 minutes to travel at the speed of light between Earth and the red planet, but just a few seconds to make the trip to the Moon. That means scientists can control VIPER more like a drone. \u201cWe do real-time science,\u201d Colaprete said.<\/p>\n
The rover will take daring trips into the eternally dark craters, relying on battery power for up to 50 hours during each traverse that moves VIPER beyond the rays of the Sun, always near the horizon at the lunar poles. The 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) rover will go into hibernation when the wobble of the Moon\u2019s rotation causes the south pole to shift out of view of Earth for two weeks, cutting the direct communications link.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
NASA announced the VIPER mission in 2019. VIPER builds on the Resource Prospector mission, which NASA canceled in 2018 as the agency pivoted to a commercial approach for robotic lunar exploration. That resulted in NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which has a roster of companies eligible to bid on \u201ctask orders\u201d to ferry science and tech demo payloads to the Moon.<\/p>\n
One of those companies is Astrobotic, which NASA selected in 2020 to deliver VIPER to a landing site near Nobile Crater, a 45-mile-wide (73-kilometer) impact basin at the Moon\u2019s south pole. The roughly $200 million commercial delivery arrangement allows Astrobotic to design and build the lander to carry VIPER to the Moon, a system that NASA would have developed\u2014at greater cost\u2014for the original Resource Prospector mission.<\/p>\n
Astrobotic selected SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the company\u2019s Griffin lander, which will shepherd the VIPER rover to the Moon.<\/p>\n
The entire mission is projected to cost about $500 million, including the rover, its science payloads, and Astrobotic\u2019s contract, which covers the cost of the Falcon Heavy launch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re chugging along,\u201d Colaprete said Tuesday. \u201cWe\u2019re now less than one year from delivery to Astrobotic for integration onto their Griffin lander. So the launch is on the horizon. Our nominal launch is November 10, 2024, with currently a five-month mission duration. We\u2019re looking at ways where we might be able to extend that out a month or two beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two of VIPER\u2019s three science instruments have already been integrated into the vehicle in Houston. Then the ground team will attach solar arrays, four 20-inch (50-centimeter) wheels, and a 3-foot-long (1-meter) drill that will probe into the lunar surface to measure the depth of any ice deposits. A suite of cameras will also be installed on the vehicle, as will a mast extending some 8 feet (2.5 meters) over the ground.<\/p>\n
Water ice holds a lot of promise for space exploration. The hydrogen and oxygen could be used to generate electricity or rocket fuel or be converted into air to supply pressurized habitats on the Moon. A NASA instrument on India\u2019s Chandrayaan 1 orbiter mission first detected the tell-tale chemical signature of water at the Moon\u2019s poles in 2009.<\/p>\n
But first, scientists need to know exactly where the water is located and how easy it is to reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to a place where there is enhanced hydrogen,\u201d Colaprete said. \u201cI personally have no doubt we will see water in some form or another, it\u2019s just a matter of the concentrations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The search for ice at the Moon\u2019s poles has loomed large in the field of lunar science since an instrument on an Indian satellite discovered water molecules inside shadowed crater floors more than a decade ago. NASA is now assembling a golf cart-size rover to drive into the dark polar craters to search for ice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46082,"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":[304,697,302,625,190,3857,1342],"class_list":["post-46081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-artemis","tag-astrobotic","tag-johnson-space-center","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-rover","tag-viper"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46081"}],"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=46081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}