Vice President Mike Pence (right) gets a look at an engineering test unit for VIPER – short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – a lunar rover capable of seeking out water ice in the Moon’s soil, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley on Nov. 14, 2019. VIPER project scientist Anthony Colaprete (left) and VIPER project manager and Ames’ director of engineering Daniel Andrews (center) explained how the prospecting rover, launching in 2022, will map out the location and concentration of water ice at the Moon’s south pole, ahead of the first Artemis astronauts’ arrival in 2024.
During his visit to Ames, the vice president took a tour of the center that featured highlights of facilities and projects critical to the Artemis program. These included the Vertical Motion Simulator, the world’s largest flight simulator, which could also help prepare the next astronauts to land on the Moon; the Arc Jet Complex, NASA’s high-energy wind tunnel for testing materials and designs that protect spacecraft from intense heating when entering an atmosphere; and the VIPER mission.
Photo credit: NASA/Dominic Hart