By: Rachael Tan

Concerns, delays and costly risks lead NASA’s space rover VIPER to put its mission on hold.

VIPER, or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, has already been built. Even though it will not launch into space, scientists will be disassembling it and using its parts for other missions.

VIPER was a wheeled vehicle similar to the size of a small car. Its purpose was to search for water and ice in the shadows of the moon’s south pole.

The exploration was intended to provide an insight to what could possibly be lurking in the dark depths of the moon’s craters in the polar regions before astronauts land there.

However, delays with the VIPER rover and its carrying spacecraft led experts to be concerned about the timeline of the mission. The rising cost also risked cuts and/or cancellations of other more important missions.

Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said during a news conference, “Decisions like we’ve been discussing today are extremely difficult to make.” She adds, “We don’t make them lightly. We put a lot of thought into the best way to move forward.”

NASA’s many other missions may also be at risk of cancellation due to skyrocketing prices and delays. For example, The Europa Clipper, a robotic mission intended to explore one of Jupiter’s moons, may be delayed because of electrical component problems.

Congress is unlikely to increase NASA’s funding, which ultimately leads to missions costing more and more and taking longer than expected, which ended up finalizing their decision to end VIPER’s mission.