WASHINGTON — NASA expects to decide through early subsequent yr the following steps for a lunar rover challenge it canceled in July amid some confusion over the timing of that call.
Talking at an Oct. 28 assembly of the Lunar Exploration Research Workforce (LEAG), Joel Kearns, deputy affiliate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Project Directorate, mentioned the company used to be reviewing responses to a request for info (RFI) the company issued in August in the hunt for choice makes use of for its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) spacecraft.
NASA issued the RFI after a choice introduced in July to cancel the challenge, whose release had slipped to no previous than September 2025 on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. The company mentioned then it could solicit expressions of passion from organizations inquisitive about taking up the just about entire rover.
“We were given about 50 expressions of passion, which I can inform you ranged the gamut from moderately detailed and logically and well-thought-out concepts to simply both issues that didn’t glance very logical or, bluntly, individuals who mentioned they wish to get VIPER as a result of they would really like the tools and different high-value parts and use them on their missions,” Kearns mentioned. The ones responses led NASA to factor a extra formal RFI.
NASA is now reviewing the responses to the following RFI. “At this time we’re making an allowance for subsequent steps: what it could take to place a partnership in position,” he mentioned, however declined to offer further main points. A NASA spokesperson mentioned Oct. 30 that NASA is figuring out which responses to the RFI warrant in the hunt for additional info, and “suggest subsequent steps through early 2025.”
Kearns didn’t say what number of RFI responses the company won however Anthony Colaprete, VIPER undertaking scientist, mentioned in a separate communicate at LEAG Oct. 29 that NASA were given 11 responses. He added he used to be “firewalled” from the method and has no longer observed any of the responses. “However I believe they had been just right sufficient to have headquarters step again and say, ‘OK, what can we do subsequent?’”
One reason why NASA gave in July for canceling VIPER used to be the expectancy that the challenge, which had already suffered value will increase, would most likely enjoy further value overruns and delays from problems present in environmental checking out, which used to be simply getting underway when NASA made the cancelation choice. “I can you inform you that usually, spacecraft construction system-level environmental checking out does discover issues that do want to be corrected, which might take extra money and time,” Kearns mentioned on the July briefing to announce the verdict.
On the other hand, Colaprete mentioned that VIPER has finished each release environmental assessments and thermal vacuum assessments with none primary problems. “I’ve been part of a variety of flight thermal-vac check campaigns, and this one used to be simply completely fantastic in how nicely it went,” he mentioned. “The entirety appears to be like nice to this point.”
Present plans name for VIPER to enter long-term garage on the Johnson Area Middle, the place it went thru checking out, across the starting of the brand new yr as NASA comes to a decision on what to do with the rover. “Expectantly we’ll get some actual path very quickly,” he mentioned.
Colaprete, in his presentation, perceived to upload a brand new wrinkle to the timeline of NASA’s choice to cancel VIPER. “As you all know, in January our lunar supply plans modified,” he mentioned. “Following the Peregrine anomalies, it used to be determined through headquarters that we might no longer be flying on Griffin 1.”
That used to be a connection with Astrobotic’s first lunar lander challenge, Peregrine, which encountered an issue with its propulsion methods hours after release that avoided the spacecraft from making an attempt a lunar touchdown. The spacecraft as an alternative flew out to lunar distances ahead of returning to Earth and reentering every week and a part after release.
On the other hand, on the time of the lack of Peregrine, and for months later, NASA didn’t announce that it had taken VIPER off Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. At a briefing simply after the tip of the Peregrine challenge, Kearns mentioned that NASA would look forward to the result of the Peregrine investigation ahead of making any adjustments within the award, in the course of the Business Lunar Payload Products and services (CLPS) program, to fly VIPER on Griffin. Astrobotic launched the result of that evaluation in August, greater than a month after NASA introduced the verdict to cancel VIPER.
A NASA spokesperson mentioned Nov. 4, in keeping with an Oct. 30 inquiry, that the verdict to not fly VIPER on Griffin got here all over a termination evaluation for the rover challenge in past due June. NASA has retained the CLPS activity order with Astrobotic for the Griffin challenge and can both fly a mass simulator or different payloads known through Astrobotic.
Along with NASA’s ongoing evaluation of RFI responses, a reprieve for VIPER may come from Congress, which might direct and fund NASA to fly the challenge as at the start deliberate in a last fiscal yr 2025 spending invoice. In early September the bipartisan management of the Space Science Committee despatched a letter to NASA with questions on VIPER and NASA’s choice to cancel it.
“NASA’s choice to terminate a just about finished lunar rover and use the whole cost of the company fastened value contract with the CLPS supplier to release useless weight in lieu of VIPER raises severe questions,” the participants wrote of their letter. The questions they posed to NASA within the letter vary from prices related to VIPER to what different strategies NASA plans to make use of to gather the information that the challenge would have accumulated on water ice deposits on the lunar south pole.
Kearns mentioned on the LEAG assembly that NASA did reply to these questions in September and has no longer won any follow-up inquiries from the committee. He didn’t reveal information about the responses NASA equipped.
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