'It’s really ‘go’ time.”
"I'm super excited…it makes me very proud of all the time and effort the team has invested to get this far," David Petri, system integration and test lead for VIPER,
. The team recently began assembling the 1,000-pound rover at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.According to the release, engineers have fastened the rover's lower chassis plate and the lower parts of the frame that will support VIPER in its entirety. Currently, it sits on top of a set of risers on a specialized lift table at NASA Johnson Space Center.
VIPER aims to explore and study the Moon's environment to better understand the origin and distribution of lunar water and other resources. These findings could be imperative to determine how the resources can be harvested for future human space exploration. "We've just completed the first few steps integrating rover components that will one day be on the surface of the Moon," said Petri. "Hardware is coming in from all over the world, including some manufactured at several NASA centers – it's really 'go' time."It is. A few days ago, a modified commercial off-the-shelf mass spectrometer built to withstand the harsh lunar environment safely arrived at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Keeping the date in mind, the rover's science team will plan the best path for the rover to take so that their results can be maximized while outrunningNASA will deliver VIPER in mid-2024 to Astrobotic of Pittsburgh, ahead of a launch in late-2024. And in turn, Astrobotic is scheduled to deliver VIPER to the Moon's South Pole aboard its Griffin lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
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