VIPER has officially come back from the dead.
The NASA moon robot, whose name is short for “Volatiles Investigating Polar Explorer Rover,” will hitch a ride to the lunar surface with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin in late 2027, agency officials announced this afternoon.
“NASA is leading the world in exploring more of the moon than ever before, and this delivery is just one of many ways we’re leveraging U.S. industry to support a long-term American presence on the lunar surface,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement today.
The VIPER mission took shape as an envisioned key piece of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2030 or so.
That presence will be centered on the moon’s south polar region, which is thought to harbor lots of water ice. VIPER was designed to vet the abundance and accessibility of this important resource, which can be used for life support as well as be split it into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms to make rocket fuel.
VIPER was originally supposed to land on the moon in late 2023 aboard Griffin, a lander built by Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic; Astrobotic signed a contract to this effect with NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
But delays with both Griffin and VIPER pushed the target date back multiple times. Then, in July 2024, NASA announced it was canceling the over-budget mission, even though the car-sized rover was already fully assembled. Doing so would save about $84 million, according to the agency, which had spent roughly $450 million on the mission to that point.
NASA also said it planned to solicit offers from private companies, to see if any wanted to team up to get VIPER to the moon (and take on some of the cost). If that didn’t work out, the agency said engineers would take VIPER apart and put its key instruments on other moon robots going forward.
This past May, however, NASA announced it was putting the brakes on that industry partnership search, saying that it would “announce a new strategy for VIPER in the future.”
We learned that new strategy today: It’s a new CLPS deal with Blue Origin,with a total potential value of $190 million. The company will fulfill this goal using its robotic Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, which is slated to debut later this year on another NASA CLPS mission to the lunar south pole.
“NASA is committed to studying and exploring the moon, including learning more about water on the lunar surface, to help determine how we can harness local resources for future human exploration,” Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in today’s statement.
“We’ve been looking for creative, cost-effective approaches to accomplish these exploration goals,” she added. “This private sector-developed landing capability enables this delivery and focuses our investments accordingly — supporting American leadership in space and ensuring our long-term exploration is robust and affordable.”
If all goes according to plan, VIPER will touch down near the moon’s south pole and hunt for water ice in the area for about 100 Earth days. NASA will be in charge of these science operations; Blue Origin is responsible for the landing mission architecture, integration of VIPER into Blue Moon and deployment of the rover onto the lunar surface. The CLPS contract does not cover the mission’s launch.
