Testing, testing, testing. The VIPER team continues to work hard assessing its design through testing of various subsystems. This testing includes running hardware through environmental conditions testing to see if the parts continue to work, or even survive, including temperature testing, vacuum testing, vibration testing, and even dust testing.
A lunar mission is going to experience extraordinary ranges of temperatures, from very hot when in the Sun, to unbelievably cold when in shadow. The launch environment will shake VIPER with so much energy, we need to make sure VIPER’s systems can survive via vibration testing. The other concern about a lunar mission is that pesky dust – Apollo missions showed dust gets into everything, so the VIPER team is even testing rover release mechanisms in “dust boxes,” where the parts are exposed to a storm of flying lunar dust simulant. We’re also beginning testing with our lander partner, Astrobotic, learning how the VIPER rover can successfully depart the lander after landing by rolling down the “rampways” and understanding if there could be binding between the wheels and the ramps while driving.
This testing is an attempt to understand what we might experience during the actual mission. We even exaggerate some of the conditions to see if we have margin in our designs to help assure we can be successful if conditions turn out to be worse than we estimated.
Through this testing, we build confidence in our final design, which we will soon present to independent reviewers during the Critical Design Assessments, or CDAs, in advance of the VIPER Critical Design Review in the fall. Wish us luck!
– Dan Andrews, VIPER Project Manager