NASA Is Completing Lunar South Pole Rover for 2024 Mission

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NASA’s Artemis lunar rover [called VIPER], the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, will explore the South Pole of the Moon in late 2024 on a 100-day mission. It will assess how much water is available and determine how we get and use the Moon’s resources for future human space exploration.

Above – An artist’s concept of the completed design of NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER. VIPER will get a close-up view of the location and concentration of ice and other resources at the Moon’s South Pole, bringing us a significant step closer to NASA’s ultimate goal of a long-term presence on the Moon – making it possible to eventually explore Mars and beyond.

NASA VIPER is the first-ever resource mapping mission anywhere other than Earth. The first resource maps of the Moon will mark a critical step forward for NASA’s Artemis missions to establish a long-term presence on the surface of the Moon.

Thanks to past moon orbiting missions found the lunar ice. Close analysis is need to learn more about that water. VIPER will roam the Moon using its three instruments and a 3.28-foot (1-meter) drill to detect and analyze various lunar soil environments at a range of depths and temperatures. The rover will venture into permanently shadowed craters, some of the coldest spots in the solar system, where ice reserves have endured for billions of years.

There will be three main instruments:

The Near InfraRed Volatile Spectrometer System instrument, or NIRVSS.

The Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations instrument, or MSOLO.

The Neutron Spectrometer System, or NSS, are all arriving or have arrived at NASA and are getting added to the rover.

The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrains, or TRIDENT, drill system from Honeybee Robotics will be the final instrument to be handed over in the coming weeks, after it finishes VIPER avionics interface testing.