After Spending $450 Million, NASA Scraps Moon Rover

NASA has canceled its plan to land a robotic rover on the Moon to search for ice and other potential resources, after spending $450 million.

The plan involved landing what is dubbed the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, near the lunar South Pole, which scientists suspect may harbor ice.

It was planned for the mobile robot to spend 100 days scouting the area for ice deposits and producing a first-ever resource map, which NASA said was critical for its future Artemis missions to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon’s surface.

The decision to axe the VIPER project was announced on July 17 at a press call, with the space agency citing increased costs, delayed launch dates, and worries that future cost hikes could threaten its multi-billion-dollar program to hire private companies to deliver scientific instruments to the Moon.

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