The VIPER team has never worked harder than we are right now. Having completed the Critical Design Review late last year, the VIPER team immediately turned its attention to building and testing the rover. This is traditionally one of the most challenging times in a flight project. After years of work designing the system, the VIPER team will build and test it to see if the pieces go together and work as intended.
We continue to assemble subsystems (like the drive systems, or avionics electronics systems) and run them through environmental testing to see if they can handle not only the harsh environments of this lunar mission, but of launch itself. As we learn of the capabilities, and even limitations of our design, we then look to improve or accept what we discover. The key for this phase in a mission’s development is not perfection, but attaining as much usable knowledge of the system as we can, so when we’re actually on mission, we’ll know this system like the back of our hands.
One of the particularly challenging issues we’re having to address is the global supply chain slow-down, due to the COVID pandemic. Just as many of us have experienced in our personal lives, the VIPER team is experiencing its own shortages and delays – some significant. Numerous key systems are being delivered from vendors much later than planned, requiring the VIPER team to replan the order of activities, or even replan how we’re going to accomplish verifications of the systems’ performance. Nevertheless, the VIPER team continues to push hard and cleverly navigate these unprecedented times and circumstances, while keeping our eye on the prize for our launch date.
Wish us luck!
Go VIPER!
– Dan Andrews, VIPER Project Manager