NASA Announces to Shelve VIPER Rover Project Due to Rising Costs and Delays

TapTechNews July 18th news, the American astronauts (NASA) announced on Wednesday that due to the soaring costs and multiple project delays, it announced to shelve the VIPER rover project.

The project was originally planned to be launched at the end of 2023, but in the actual implementation process, due to delays caused by the supply chain and technology, NASA had previously postponed the launch time to September 2025.

The full name of VIPER is the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, which is planned to go to the south pole of the moon to carry out a mission, explore water sources on the moon, and make more sufficient preparations for the subsequent Artemis moon landing plan.

NASA said that if the VIPER project continues to be promoted, it may lead to a further increase in costs and affect or interrupt other tasks under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) plan.

According to Bloomberg, so far, the agency has spent 450 million US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 3.276 billion yuan) to develop the rover, and the agency did not invest more resources in the detector, but chose to disassemble the detector's instruments for other future moon landing tasks.