![]() ![]() ![]() With no atmosphere, the extreme temperatures experienced on the Moon can vary by over 260 degrees Celsius, and night can last up to a week. The engineering requirements for a lunar rover are very different than those for a Mars rover like Perseverance. NASA has built lunar rovers before, which traversed more than 90 kilometers carrying Apollo astronauts, but an uncrewed, remotely operated lunar rover will be a first for NASA. The mission should last about 100 days, including surviving several long lunar nights. ![]() The rover and its lander will be delivered to the Moon by a Falcon Heavy rocket as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) next year. It is also equipped with a drill that can dig up to 1 meter beneath the surface. VIPER will be the first rover to feature headlights, enabling it to peer into these dark craters. Credit: NASA.Īs a precursor to human landings at the Moon’s south pole under the auspices of the Artemis program later this decade, VIPER will act as a pathfinder, seeking resources and a better understanding of how water is stored inside deep shadowed craters and within the lunar regolith. The distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched by the Indian Space Research Organization in 2008. The latest tests were performed using a prototype called ‘Moon Gravitation Representative Unit 3’ or MGRU3, which simulates the rover’s expected behavior in the Moon’s gravity, which is one-sixth that of the Earth. This included the worst-case high-pitch scenario using the steepest – and scariest – ramps, the worst-case roll scenario using the most uneven ramps, and the worst-case scenario with pitch and roll combined,” said Jasper Wolfe, VIPER egress test lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, in a press release. “Through this series, we’ve tested all of the ‘bounding’ cases for VIPER’s egress on the Moon. A series of tests carried out this spring are helping engineers understand the rover’s limits, and will ensure that VIPER can disembark from its lander even on extremely uneven terrain. But the terrain it will find when it reaches the Moon is impossible to predict. Named VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), the rover is set for launch in late 2024. NASA is building its first-ever robotic lunar rover. ![]()
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