NASA's VIPER rover is halfway built as the new year approaches

“We also have taken delivery of most of the key pieces of hardware we acquired from our various external vendors,” wrote Dan Andrews, VIPER Project Manager, in a press release, highlighting another important step given that a large number of vendors responsible for critical components were behind schedule, owing to supply chain difficulties triggered by the pandemic.

While progressing through the first half of the rover build, the VIPER team encountered various challenges, owing to the complex nature of designing a vehicle capable of tackling the harsh lunar environment, such as concerns with design and Foreign Object Debris (FOD) that prevented connectors from reliably working.

"We’ve also found some unexpected performance characteristics revealed by some vendor hardware, which we have had to then fold into our plans for how we operate VIPER," reflected Andrews on these challenges. With each challenge addressed, the VIPER team moves closer to crafting a resilient and functional rover ready for launch, landing, and operations on the Moon.

AI-powered exploration.

The VIPER is expected to land on the Moon’s south pole and leverage System Health Enabled Real-time Planning Advisor, or SHERPA, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system named after the Himalayan Sherpa people, expert guides to climbers daring to venture the Himalayan mountains.

SHERPA will ingest and evaluate massive volumes of data to account for harsh conditions on the moon’s surface and determine the probability of discovering resources at designated sites, contributing to our better understanding of the moon, particularly the South Pole, a prime target for future exploration.

“It can assess the various risks of different routes by running thousands of mission simulations, and even provide contingency branches for where to go if something changes or doesn’t go according to plan,” described NASA in a statement earlier this month.

As VIPER continues its journey from the drawing board to the lunar surface, the team remains dedicated to refining and perfecting the rover's capabilities. The upcoming months will be crucial as the flight rover assembly nears completion, paving the way for extensive testing in environments mirroring the lunar mission.

In the words of Andrews, "Once the team completes the flight rover assembly, the next step will be to test that rover in the kinds of environments it will see on the mission. This activity will be our primary focus in 2024, and our final step prior to delivering VIPER for launch integration. Go VIPER!"