Rover NASA's Moon Rover Practices its Lunar Lander Exit

NASA's Moon rover prototype completed lunar lander egress tests.

The VIPER mission is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and is scheduled to be delivered to Mons Mouton near the South Pole of the Moon in late 2024 by Astrobotic's Griffin lander as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

VIPER will inform future Artemis landing sites by helping to characterize the lunar environment and help determine locations where water and other resources could be harvested to sustain humans over extended stays.

The VIPER science team also aims to address how frozen water and other volatiles got on the Moon in the first place, where they came from, what has kept some of them preserved over billions of years, and where they go after they escape the lunar soil.