NASA plans to send its first mobile robot to the Moon in late 2023 to search for water and other resources on the surface and subsurface. The rover, called Viper (acronym for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover and 'viper' in English) will collect data at the lunar south pole that will help the agency locate everything that may one day be useful to future human explorers.
Viper, which is part of the Artemis program to return to the Moon, will also be the first lunar rover to carry headlights to help explore permanently shadowed regions of the Moon. These areas have not seen sunlight in billions of years and are some of the coldest spots in the solar system. Powered by solar power, the rover will be challenged to quickly maneuver around the extreme changes of light and darkness at the lunar South Pole.
"Viper data has the potential to help our scientists determine precise locations and ice concentrations on the Moon and will help us assess the environment and potential resources at the lunar south pole in preparation for the Artemis astronauts," summarizes Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Sciences Division in Washington. "This is yet another example of how robotic science missions and human exploration go hand in hand, and why both are necessary as we prepare to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon."
Specifically, water ice could be used as breathable air and rocket propellant by future deep space explorers. If successful, this lunar rover's work could be the first step toward utilizing resources in the space environment, rather than removing them all from Earth, which would be much more expensive and less sustainable.
Private company
A company, Astrobotic, will be in charge of launching, transiting and delivering Viper to the lunar surface as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, a NASA program to contract transportation services capable of sending small robotic lunar landers and exploration vehicles to our natural satellite.
Viper will travel aboard the Griffin lunar lander. Once on the Moon, it will explore the craters for three lunar days (100 Earth days) using a specialized set of wheels and a suspension system to cover a variety of slopes and soil types. In addition, it will carry four instruments: a percussion drill (Trident) and three spectrometers (MSolo, Nirvss and NSS).
Early versions of these instruments will be tested on the lunar surface before the mission, allowing the team to reduce risk and determine their performance. Trident and Msolo will travel to the Moon in late 2022 on a CLPS flight aboard the Prime-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment), a drill combined with a tool to analyze resources harvested beneath the lunar surface.
NASA has invested 350 million euros in this mid-sized rover and the current value of the contract for Astrobotic to deliver Viper to the Moon is approximately 185 million euros.
The never seen
“Viper will be the most capable robot NASA has ever sent to the lunar surface and will allow us to explore parts of the Moon we have never seen,” says Sarah Noble, program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "The rover will teach us about the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and prepare us to collect resources 386,000 km from Earth that could be used to safely send astronauts even further, including Mars."
The Artemis program involves sending robots and humans to explore the Moon as we have never done before. When astronauts return to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, they will follow in Viper's wheel tracks and land at the lunar south pole. That mission will include the first woman on the Moon. She will be one of two crew members paving the way for future sustainable missions carried out by human explorers on our satellite.