NASA’s first robotic moon rover is prepared for final assembly and testing, and you possibly can watch engineers bring the lunar explorer to life.
The rover, called VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), will explore the moon and collect water-ice samples from permanently shadowed areas near the lunar south pole. VIPER has an expected launch date of November 2024, and its mission team has begun final assembly and testing procedures, which NASA will broadcast live during monthly watch parties for the general public to follow along in the ultimate stages of preparing the rover for space.
“We’re really excited for people to see the VIPER rover hardware coming together,” Daniel Andrews, the VIPER mission project manager at NASA Ames Research Center in California, said in an announcement from the space agency. “All of our planning and concepts are actually going into constructing this first-of-its-kind moon rover.”
Related: Watch NASA’s VIPER moon rover practice leaving its lunar lander (video)
During the last several months, the rover’s individual components — including its lights, wheels and science instruments — have been put to the test and are actually being pieced together at NASA’s Surface Segment Integration and Testing Facility clean room on the Johnson Space Center in Houston, in line with the statement.
NASA will host live events once a month from November 2023 through January 2024, during which mission specialists will answer questions from the general public and supply updates on the rover, which can weigh roughly 1,000 kilos once fully assembled.
The primary watch party took place on Nov. 8:
Viewers can check the VIPER mission page for more information on when the following watch party will air online. The present schedule is:
- Wednesday, Dec. 6 at noon PST / 3 p.m. EST
- (Spanish-speaking) Thursday, Dec. 7 at noon PST / 3 p.m. EST
- Wednesday, Jan. 10 at noon PST / 3 p.m. EST, and
- (Spanish-speaking) Thursday, Jan. 11 at noon PST / 3 p.m. EST
VIPER is slated to land on Mons Mouton, a mountain near the moon’s south pole. It should touch down near the western rim of Nobile crater, where it should be tasked with characterizing the lunar environment to help in selecting future Artemis program landing sites.
A part of NASA’s Artemis program goals to establish a everlasting settlement on the moon’s south pole, where some areas of the lunar surface never receive direct sunlight and thus are extremely cold. VIPER will play a key role in helping determine locations where water and other resources could possibly be harvested to sustain humans during prolonged stays on the moon.
“Using its drill and three science instruments, researchers will gain a greater understanding of how frozen water and other volatiles are distributed on the moon, their cosmic origin, and what has kept them preserved within the lunar soil for billions of years,” NASA officials said within the statement.
VIPER has many months of ultimate assembly and testing ahead before it should be able to ship to the Astrobotic Payload Processing Facility in Florida in mid-2024. Be certain to follow along because the rover gears up for its launch to the lunar surface.