Key Takeaways:
- NASA reinstated the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission, awarding Blue Origin a contract to deliver the rover to the Moon's South Pole in late 2027.
- The $190 million contract, structured to mitigate cost overruns and risks, involves an initial design phase followed by an optional landing phase contingent on Blue Origin's successful first lunar landing.
- VIPER's 100-day mission aims to locate and map water ice in permanently shadowed craters, a crucial resource for future human lunar exploration and a key component of NASA's Artemis program.
- The revived mission reflects a renewed emphasis on lunar exploration, driven by competition with other nations, particularly China, and the strategic importance of securing lunar resources.
NASA announced Friday, Sept. 19, it is reviving its canceled water-hunting rover and has awarded Blue Origin a contract to deliver it to the Moon’s South Pole in late 2027, a critical step in the agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the lunar surface.
The golf-cart-sized vehicle, known as the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), was controversially shelved just over a year ago despite being almost fully assembled. This new task order, awarded under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, gives the nearly half-billion-dollar machine a second chance at its mission and provides Jeff Bezos’s space company a major opportunity to prove its deep-space capabilities.
NASA did not give an explicit reason for its reversal. But it comes as Trump administration officials have declared their intent to focus the agency on exploration. While VIPER was constructed under NASA’s science budget, the mission is also considered key for NASA and its Artemis program as the agency races to scout for resources ahead of competing lunar programs, most notably China’s.
“NASA is leading the world in exploring more of the Moon than ever before, and this delivery is just one of many ways we’re leveraging U.S. industry to support a long-term American presence on the lunar surface,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in Friday’s press release. “Our rover will explore the extreme environment of the lunar South Pole … important insights for sustaining humans over longer missions, as America leads our future in space.”
A new contract and renewed urgency
The revival marks a dramatic turnaround for VIPER, which was canceled in July 2024, stunning the scientific community. Its original mission included a $199.5 million contract with commercial firm Astrobotic to deliver it to the lunar surface. NASA had already spent $450 million to build the rover; cancelling its launch would save it $84 million, the agency said.
In a July 2024 statement, NASA cited “cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth” as the reasons for the cancellation, after testing needs and supply chain issues pushed the launch back by nearly two years. (While NASA removed VIPER from its task order with Astrobotic, the company’s Griffin lander is now slated to carry the FLIP rover from commercial partner Astrolab on its mission to the Moon.)
At the time, NASA said it would consider proposals from industry and other organizations to launch and operate VIPER — as long as it came at no cost to the government.
The new contract with Blue Origin reverses that stance, but it is structured to shield the agency from further cost overruns and delays. The task order, called CS-7, consists of an initial award base for Blue Origin to handle the mission’s design phase — planning the end-to-end payload integration, designing specific accommodations for VIPER, and demonstrating how the rover will be safely offloaded onto the lunar surface.
Then, NASA will have the option for the actual landing after Blue Origin completes this preparatory work and successfully lands its first MK1 mission later this year. This approach, with a total potential value of $190 million, shifts some of the inherent risks from the agency to the company. As NASA noted in its Sept. 19 press release, “This unique approach will reduce the agency’s cost and technical risk.”
According to reporting from SpaceNews, Blue Origin was the only CLPS provider that could accommodate the rover and meet the accelerated 2027 landing date, a deadline now deemed critical for outpacing international rivals. The decision to revive the mission with a new contract structure comes as the agency navigates broader financial pressures, with its fiscal year 2026 budget still facing congressional debate.
A high-stakes delivery
The new task order is Blue Origin’s second from the CLPS program, but the company’s performance on the lunar surface is still unproven. While Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket for the first time earlier in the year, its first landing attempt will be later this year, using its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies. If successful, the same lander model will carry VIPER. Slightly taller than the Apollo Lunar Module, the MK1 is set to become the largest vehicle to ever land on the lunar surface.
The CLPS initiative is a key part of NASA’s strategy to foster a commercial space economy. Under the program, NASA buys payload delivery services from a pool of private American companies, allowing the agency to rapidly send science and technology experiments to the lunar surface. This model, NASA acknowledges, comes with a higher risk of failure — a reality underscored by recent setbacks like the loss of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander and the hard landings of Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 and IM-2 missions.
A rover built for extremes
VIPER’s 100-day mission is central to the strategic goals of the Artemis program. While rovers have explored the Moon since the Soviet Lunokhods of the 1970s, VIPER is uniquely designed for one of the most hostile environments imaginable. It will use headlights to navigate and prospect for water ice in permanently shadowed craters where sunlight hasn’t reached for billions of years, making them some of the coldest spots in the solar system. This ice is considered a crucial resource, potentially providing drinking water, breathable air, and rocket propellant for future astronauts.
To conduct its search, VIPER will wield a suite of specialized tools. Its primary instrument is the Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Territories (TRIDENT), a one-meter percussion drill capable of boring into the tough lunar soil. The shavings from the drill are then analyzed by three spectrometers to determine their composition. Beyond its scientific payload, VIPER features an innovative mobility system; its four wheels can move independently, allowing it to traverse steep slopes and even “swim” through extremely soft soil by sweeping its wheels, a crucial capability for navigating unpredictable alien terrain.
A race for resources
Finding and mapping these resources has taken on new urgency amid a “second space race.” Under Duffy, NASA has accelerated plans for lunar infrastructure, including a nuclear fission reactor that could power a lunar base. This aims to counter China’s goals of landing its own astronauts by 2030 and constructing a reactor with Russia by the mid-2030s, potentially establishing “keep-out zones” around valuable resources. This strategy is underpinned by the U.S.-led Artemis Accords, an international framework for peaceful lunar exploration signed by dozens of nations, but notably not by China and Russia. By mapping accessible water ice, VIPER will provide the foundational data needed to select landing sites and plan for a sustainable American foothold on the Moon.
The mission’s revival, coming on the heels of a recent appropriations bill that bolstered funding for the Artemis program, echoes a renewed focus on the agency’s exploration objectives. “The search for lunar volatiles plays a key role in NASA’s exploration of the Moon, with important implications for both science and human missions under Artemis,” said Joel Kearns, a deputy associate administrator at NASA, in the Sept. 19 press release. “This delivery could show us where ice is most likely to be found and easiest to access, as a future resource for humans.”
If Blue Origin succeeds, it will not only resurrect this vital science mission but also strengthen its position as a key player in America’s return to the Moon. The company has already been contracted by NASA to build a human landing system for Artemis crews that would serve as an alternative to SpaceX’s Starship lander. Reacting to the announcement on the social media platform X, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said, “This mission is critical to establishing a long-term presence on the Moon, and we’re proud to play a role in this important endeavor.”
