NASA has chosen Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin area enterprise to assist it resurrect a mission to ship a robotic prospector to the moon’s south polar area.
Blue Origin will likely be tasked with drawing up a plan to ship the VIPER rover to the moon in late 2027, utilizing its uncrewed Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander. This is able to be Blue Origin’s second lunar lander. The primary lander is due for launch as early as this yr, with the target of delivering NASA’s SCALPSS digicam system and a retroreflective array to the lunar floor.
The newly introduced process order, often known as CS-7, was awarded by NASA’s Industrial Lunar Payload Companies program and has a complete potential worth of $190 million.
“NASA is main the world in exploring extra of the moon than ever earlier than, and this supply is only one of some ways we’re leveraging U.S. trade to assist a long-term American presence on the lunar floor,” performing NASA Administrator Sean Duffy stated in the present day in a information launch.
VIPER is designed to discover completely shadowed areas close to the moon’s south pole for indicators of unstable supplies, together with water ice. Such ice could possibly be extracted to supply drinkable water and breathable oxygen in addition to hydrogen for rocket gasoline. For what it’s value, VIPER is an acronym that stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover.
Duffy stated the VIPER mission will “assist inform future touchdown websites for our astronauts and higher perceive the moon’s setting – essential insights for sustaining people over longer missions, as America leads our future in area.”
VIPER was initially on account of go to the moon aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, however final yr, NASA put the mission on maintain on account of price will increase and schedule delays. This yr, NASA stated it was exploring “different approaches” for getting VIPER to the moon — a course of that led as much as in the present day’s announcement.
“Wanting ahead to partnering with NASA to arrange VIPER for flight on our second MK1 lunar lander,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp stated in a posting to X. “VIPER is extremely essential, together with devices to assist seek for sources like ice. This consists of our Honeybee Robotics TRIDENT drill, designed to penetrate as much as 3 ft, or 1 m, under the lunar floor.”
For its half, Astrobotic stated it was “heartened to listen to” that VIPER could have the chance to fly. “Given the compressed timeline of the CS-7 mission and our commitments to current clients, Astrobotic made the strategic choice to not submit a bid,” the corporate stated in an emailed assertion.
The bottom process for Blue Origin includes designing lodging for the VIPER rover and demonstrating how its flight design will offload the rover to the lunar floor. NASA will determine whether or not to train its choice to have Blue Origin ship and deploy the rover after it evaluations Blue Origin’s preparatory work and the primary flight of the Blue Moon MK1 lander.
VIPER has a focused science window for its 100-day mission that requires a touchdown by late 2027. Below the phrases of the duty order, Blue Origin would deal with payload integration, planning and assist, in addition to post-landing deployment actions. NASA can be in control of rover operations and science planning.
