NASA announced today that it has canceled its VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) mission, which was planned to explore the Moon’s South Pole region for water ice.

The vehicle, about the size of a small car, is already built and was awaiting final processing and launch late next year. Now, NASA plans to disassemble and reuse VIPER’s instruments and components for future Moon missions. The Astrobotic Griffin lander, intended to carry the VIPER rover, will proceed with its mission without the rover.

Delays, Rising Cost Cited

Originally slated to launch in 2023, VIPER had experienced delays due to supply chain issues and scheduling delays. NASA cited those reasons in its cancelation announcement today.

Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for exploration in the science directorate for NASA, stated today in a press conference that the agency had spent $450 million on VIPER. NASA anticipates saving about $84 million dollars by cancelling the project.

“The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years,” NASA’s associate administrator of the science mission directorate, Nicola Fox stated today in a NASA release. “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.”

According to NASA, “Astrobotic will continue its Griffin Mission One within its contract with NASA, working toward a launch scheduled for no earlier than fall 2025. The landing without VIPER will provide a flight demonstration of the Griffin lander and its engines.”

NASA will still pay Astrobotic for that mission, despite their removing the payload from it.

NASA also said that the agency “will pursue alternative methods to accomplish many of VIPER’s goals and verify the presence of ice at the lunar South Pole. A future CLPS delivery – the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) — scheduled to land at the South Pole during the fourth quarter of 2024, will search for water ice and carry out a resource utilization demonstration using a drill and mass spectrometer to measure the volatile content of subsurface materials.”

Some scientists did not agree with this decision. On the X platform, Dr. Phil Metzger, the Director, Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research & Education at the University of Central Florida said “This was the premier mission to measure lateral and vertical variations of lunar ice in the soil. It would have been revolutionary. Other missions don’t replace what is lost here.” Dr. Metzger is the co-founder of NASA’s Swamp Works and is a noted space scientist.