An artist’s impression of NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) | NASA
Space robotics company Astrobotic will carry a water-hunting rover to the Moon in late 2023, NASA announced today. Which rocket will launch the commercial mission is still being decided, but the golf-cart sized rover will head down to the Moon’s surface using an Astrobotic lunar lander.
NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, will hunt for water ice at the lunar south pole and try to figure out how much water is lurking in permanently shadowed craters in the region. NASA wants to map out where water is, in the hopes that it could extract water for future missions.
Astrobotic was chosen from a pool of other commercial providers as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. CLPS is designed…