WASHINGTON — NASA is moving ahead with plans to partner with a company to deliver a rover to the surface of the moon after the agency canceled the mission last year.
NASA released Feb. 3 an Announcement for Partnership Proposal, seeking proposals from U.S. companies interested in working with the agency to take the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) spacecraft to the moon.
Under the proposed partnership, NASA would provide VIPER, a rover the agency has built and tested. The selected company would be responsible for launching the rover and landing it on the moon, then handling operations of the rover and the dissemination of the scientific data it collected.
NASA had planned to operate VIPER itself, contracting with Astrobotic for delivering the rover to the south polar region of the moon through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. However, the agency announced last July it was canceling the project, citing growing costs of the rover and concerns about additional schedule delays.
At the time, NASA opened the door for potential partnerships with companies or other nations to take over the mission. It solicited expressions of interest, followed by a request for information (RFI), receiving 11 responses to the VIPER RFI. In late October, Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said the agency was considering “next steps” for VIPER and would make a decision on what those would be by early in the new year.
NASA argues a partnership with industry would both preserve the mission’s science, which involves prospecting for water ice in shadowed craters at the lunar south pole, as well as allow companies to demonstrate their capabilities for delivering payloads like VIPER, which weighs 500 kilograms, to the lunar surface.
“Moving forward with a VIPER partnership offers NASA a unique opportunity to engage with the private sector,” Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said in a statement. “Such a partnership provides the opportunity for NASA to collect VIPER science that could tell us more about water on the Moon, while advancing commercial lunar landing capabilities and resource prospecting possibilities.”
NASA is following a two-step approach to this competition. The agency is requesting “Step 1” proposals where companies would outline their approach to flying VIPER and achieving its science goals. While a NASA statement said the proposals were due Feb. 20, the procurement documents themselves state the deadline is March 3.
The agency will review those proposals and, within a week, inform which companies that will be invited to submit a more detailed Step 2 proposal, offering additional information on their technical approach for VIPER as well as schedule, management and funding plans. The Step 2 proposals will be due May 2, with NASA planning to select a company within 30 days. NASA will then enter into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, with that company to fly VIPER.
NASA does not intend to provide any funding to the selected company. “NASA will provision the VIPER rover hardware to the partner as-is,” the announcement states. “Partner will be responsible for integrated testing with their lander and analysis, integration, launch, lunar transit, landing, rover roll-off/offload/disembarkment, and surface operations and dissemination of VIPER-generated science data in accordance with the terms of the resulting CRADA agreement.”
This means the selected company would likely spend hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver VIPER while making the science data the rover collects freely available. NASA told members of the House Science Committee last year that it looked at alternative approaches to delivering VIPER and estimated they would cost the agency $350 million to $550 million.
Kearns, in a statement about the new partnership plans, argued that companies would benefit by demonstrating the ability to successfully land a large, valuable payload like VIPER. “Being selected for the VIPER partnership would benefit any company interested in advancing their lunar landing and surface operations capabilities,” he said. “NASA is looking forward to partnering with U.S. industry to meet the challenges of performing volatiles science in the lunar environment.”
