The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wants to sign important initiatives with many projects it has been working on recently. One of them was the project of searching for water on the Moon. However, the project faced some problems.
The journey of VIPER, a water exploration vehicle on the moon, has been postponed to 2024
As it is known, NASA is considering big projects related to the Moon. The largest of these, Artemis, hosts targets such as a manned mission to the Moon and a resident colony. Solving the water problem on the Moon stands out as one of the critical steps for the realization of these goals.
VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) vehicle belonging to NASA will be used in this project. NASA accelerated its attempts for the water exploration project on the Moon and wanted to realize it in 2023. However, some problems encountered in the landing tests caused the project to be delayed. According to the statement, the project was postponed to 2024.
NASA official Thomas Zurbuchen made the following statements on the subject.
VIPER’s delivery needs to be delayed until 2023 so that the rover can conduct longer and more exciting scientific studies of the Moon. Once the rover lands, it will collect up to 100 days of data, travel several kilometers and survive lunar nights. VIBER is the first rover to report global maps of the Moon’s water resources.
NASA has hired Astrobotic as a commercial partner to develop the terrain vehicle for this mission in 2020 through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. As part of the project, Astrobotic will undertake the construction of the landing craft that will carry the VIBER.
Astrobotic will use a vehicle called Griffin to transport VIPER. On the other hand, this payment from NASA causes extra financial damage to the agency. NASA will pay Astrobotic an extra $67.8 million for this. However, the payment to Astrobotic has exceeded $320 million.
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