US space agency NASA announced Tuesday that it will delay the launch of its water-hunting VIPER Moon rover by a year to allow more time to develop a landing vehicle for the mission.
according to a Statement From National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) was scheduled for launch in November 2023, however, now the launch date has been pushed to November 2024 to allow more time for ground testing of the Griffin lander which will distribute to VIPER. Lunar South Pole.
NASA selected Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh company, as a commercial partner to develop the VIPER and Griffin lander for this mission in 2020, through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) initiative. VIPER is tasked with observing and measuring the presence of ice at the Moon’s south pole and the presence of water beneath the surface.
“The additional tests are intended to reduce the overall risk of VIPER’s delivery to the Moon,” the space agency explained in a press note.
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This is the second time the mission has been delayed. Back in 2020, NASA announced that the extra time would be used for an “upgrade” of the water-hunting rover.
The VIPER Rover is about the size of a golf cart and weighs less than 1,000 pounds. According to independentThe rover will use its 3.28-foot-long drill to sample lunar regolith and search for water in a variety of lunar terrain, including craters where water ice may have been preserved for billions of years in deep shadow.
In particular, an important part of the mission NASA’s Artemis Program, which is scheduled to launch in 2025 and aims to return humans to the Moon. The presence of water may be important in establishing the long-term presence of humans on the lunar surface, and it may also play a role in human space exploration in the deep reaches of the Solar System.