By: Justin Ding
After spending 450 million dollars on a moon rover, NASA has decided to quit the project due to financial issues in the future budget.
On October 25, 2019, NASA officially announced the “Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover,” more commonly known as “VIPER,” a rover meant to explore the moon’s south pole for ice. A little less than 5 years later, they canceled the mission on July 10, 2024, due to a variety of reasons.
The VIPER was finished being built and was undergoing its testing phase. This mission faced many problems to begin with, such as time alterations and budgetary issues. To start, the Covid-19 pandemic slowed down the supply chain, which led to the project being delayed from a launch date in 2023 to 2025.
According to Margerita Bassi, a science journalist for the Smithsonian magazine, “This year, NASA received 8.5 percent less funding than it asked for—the worst funding outcome for the agency compared to its request since 1992, when it received 8.9 percent less money than requested.”
With the rising costs of the time extension and the low funding, NASA quit this mission and stated that more missions in the future could do the same that VIPER should have done. Additionally, NASA has claimed that this project could save about 84 million dollars after this project ballooned in costs.
However, in a letter to Congress, the public statement asks lawmakers to refuse NASA’s cancellation of the VIPER Moon mission.
According to Leonad David, an award-winning space journalist who has been working for over 50 years for Space.com, “‘The decision to cancel the project at this stage, after spending $450 million,’ the letter argues, ‘is both unprecedented and indefensible.’”
This side of the argument states that they should be considerate to the VIPER team and that they did not give the team any chances to make budget-reducing proposals. Some have said VIPER was a one-of-a-kind project that would be an important stepping stone in human exploration and the future of humanity.
In the end, NASA canceled a project that was about to be finished and had to disassemble the rover and use its parts elsewhere.
Image Credit by Kateryna Babaieva