The VIPER lunar rover is already halfway through construction, achieving key milestones such as payload integration and hardware procurement. The team is working through design and hardware challenges, with final testing planned for 2024 to ensure mission readiness. The following is the latest article from VIPER project manager Dan Andrews:

Artistic concept drawing of the completed design of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER). VIPER will take a close look at the location and concentration of lunar south pole ice and other resources, bringing us a giant step closer to NASA's ultimate goal of a long-term presence on the moon - which will enable our eventual exploration of Mars and beyond. Image credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter

The VIPER team is working hard to build a vehicle that will fly to the lunar surface this time next year! In fact, we're already halfway through the build, and you can watch the process unfold and hear from the team's experts throughout the process via various live interactions.

All science instrument teams have delivered their payloads to the VIPER Systems Integration and Test team, which will install the payloads onto the actual flying rover; in fact, all but one of the payloads have been installed! This past summer was a huge milestone and a common thorn in the side of many flight projects. I'm so happy that all the birds have come home to nest!

We also receive the majority of critical hardware procured from external suppliers. This is also a very important milestone because many suppliers of critical components are behind schedule in delivering to projects due to pandemic-era supply chain issues that are still impacting the industry in some unexpected ways. Fortunately, VIPER has passed the development stage, and now we can focus on assembling all the parts into a functioning rover.

An animation of NASA's VIPER on the lunar surface. Image source: NASAAmes/DanielRutter

Now that we are building the aircraft, we are able to see exactly how our design plans will perform in reality. During the first half of the rover's construction, we encountered a number of issues, including connector issues from the supplier, and we identified and corrected some design and foreign object debris issues that prevented the connectors from working reliably.

We also discovered that some vendors' hardware had some unexpected performance characteristics and had to incorporate these characteristics into our VIPER operational plan...These problems and solutions are all a very challenging part of building the vehicle to ensure that the vehicle can survive the very harsh launch, landing and lunar surface operating environment.

Once the team has completed assembling the flying rover, the next step will be to test the rover in a variety of environments it will encounter during the mission. This activity will be our main focus in 2024 and our final step before delivering VIPER for launch integration.

Come on, VIPER!