NASA Cancels Viper Lunar Rover Program

[Greg Furtman]

NASA has cancelled the Viper Lunar Rover program even though the Viper has been built & tested. The reason? Budget over run, but not by much. Instead they plan on launching an inert mass equivalent. This is one of the most asinine decisions NASA has ever made, IMHO. It's all about politics, not science.

 

[Antares JS]

Other disappointing cancelations, I pretty much get. This one though...

 

[kuririn]

Crazy.

 

[RocketPro]

This was sad news for my friends at NASA Ames…I know the Deputy Manager of VIPER.
Scott Manley is only about 1/2 right…the VIPER rover was not fully tested, they still had a bunch to do.
The changes to the lander after first Astrobotic attempt just created so much integration uncertainty. I can tell you that there was a multi-weeks effort to see if the mission could be saved and it was a hard choice. Note, I did not participate in any of that work so I don’t have any inside info on the choice. But I have been through that process before on other missions and it’s never taken lightly or just politically-driven.

The NASA budget is really, really bad for 2025…in ways that aren’t obvious.
See https://www.planetary.org/articles/hac-cjs-fy-2025-nasa-budget-creates-problems-for-science-artemis for one take on it.
It’s not about how much you’ve invested, its about how much remains to invest vs the value. That value proposition changes as the overall budgets get bad.

There is another set of NASA rovers going to the moon within the next year or so called CADRE.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cadre
That set is completed and fully tested, sitting at JPL in cold storage (for the batteries) and waiting for their CLPS lander (IM-3) to get far enough along to integrate.