NASA’s big mission to hunt for water on the Moon has slipped by another year, to 2024, due to the agency requesting further testing of lander that will deliver the payload to the lunar surface.
NASA selected Astrobotic as the commercial partner to develop the lander for this mission in 2020, through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. While Astrobotic is providing the lander, NASA is developing the rover, VIPER, in-house. VIPER, or the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is tasked with observing and quantifying the presence of ice in the moon’s South Pole, and water underneath the surface.
“The additional tests aim to reduce the overall risk to VIPER’s delivery to t …
