VIPER Has been Delayed Until November 2024:

The water-seeking VIPER Moon rover’s launch has been postponed by a year, the American space agency NASA revealed on Tuesday, in an effort to give the mission’s landing craft more time to be developed.

The launch of the VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) has been delayed until November 2024, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to allow for extra ground testing of the Griffin lander, which will transport VIPER to the lunar South Pole. Initially, the VIPER was supposed to take off in November 2023.

Through its Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) programme, NASA chose Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic as its commercial partner to create VIPER and the Griffin lander for this mission in 2020. The mission of VIPER is to observe and measure the amount of ice and water present at the South Pole of the moon.

According to a press release from the space agency, “the additional tests aim to lower the overall risk to VIPER’s delivery to the Moon.”

Perseverance Rover of NASA Discovers Hair-Like Object on Mars:

The mission has been delayed twice already. NASA has previously stated that extra time will be used for “upgrades” to the water-seeking rover in 2020.

The VIPER rover weighs slightly under 1,000 pounds and is about the size of a golf cart. According to Independent, the rover’s 3.28-foot-long drill will be used to sample lunar regolith and look for water across a variety of lunar terrain types, including craters where deep shadows may have kept water ice intact for billions of years.

It should be noted that the mission is an important component of NASA’s Artemis programme, which will launch in 2025 and seeks to send people back to the moon. Human space exploration into the deeper regions of the solar system and the establishment of a permanent human presence on the lunar surface may both depend on the availability of water.