Timing is critical for the VIPER mission, given there are limited calendar opportunities to operate a solar-powered rover on polar regions of the Moon. No Sun, no mission—so the team is always attempting to find ways to eliminate risks during the schedule as we look forward.
One of the areas where scheduling could become difficult is when we are building the rover. The VIPER rover is a complicated, sophisticated, one-of-a-kind mobile robot, and so it is only natural that things could go wrong when we go to build it. How can we reduce that schedule risk? Answer: Build a practice version of the rover first!
The VIPER team just completed a project we call the Assembly Pathfinder. This rover will never find itself on the Moon, nor does it even actually function. The Pathfinder is made from aluminum and 3D-printed plastic in the exact shapes and configurations as the actual rover components. The idea is that we build all of these parts cheaply and try assembling them in the same clean room we will build the flight rover in, using the same equipment and same procedures, so that we can practice what is involved with the effort.
This Pathfinder carries all sorts of risk-reducing benefits:
- We learn how to assemble the rover in a forgiving environment (it’s okay to make a mistake with a plastic part).
- We can let the rover design team know when we discover something about the assembly that is difficult or risky so that they might improve the design for the actual flight rover.
- We practice and correct our assembly procedures so that they are refined when we are assembling the real hardware.
- We learn how to operate within our clean room.
Now that the VIPER System Integration team has just completed this assembly milestone, we are smarter and better prepared when it comes time to build the real rover.
More to come!
– Dan Andrews, VIPER Project Manager