Welcome to the VIPER Mission Manager’s page! I thought it might be helpful (and occasionally entertaining) to hear about the latest from the team developing the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover in its pursuit of this challenging and important robotic mission to the South Pole of the Moon.
Since you’ve found yourself on this page already, you probably already have a good idea about NASA’s polar water-hunting mission to the Moon. The VIPER team has already been working at developing this mission for some time now. VIPER stands on the shoulders of the innovative work completed by the Resource Prospector rover team, who initially planned how an in-situ resource utilization mission might work, including developing some very clever, inexpensive instruments that trace back to earlier technology development programs.
I’m very proud to share that the VIPER team held a successful preliminary design review, or PDR, and the recent, successful confirmation review, known formally as key decision point C, shows the VIPER project team successfully demonstrated to NASA leadership that it can meet all the requirements with an acceptable level of risk within cost and schedule restraints. This confirmation clears the way to officially implement the final design of the rover, putting the mission an important step closer to launching to the Moon’s South Pole in late 2023.
The VIPER team now continues to detail our design baselined at the PDR, as it looks towards the next major milestone, critical design review, in the fall of 2021.
Enjoy navigating the VIPER pages to learn more about the mission and we will continue to keep everyone up to date on the latest!
– Dan Andrews, VIPER project manager