Thousands of scientists have protested in the US Congress over NASA’s “unprecedented and indefensible” decision to cancel its Viper lunar mission.
In an open letter to Capitol Hill, they denounced the move, which was revealed last month, and slammed the space agency over a decision that has shocked astronomers and astrophysicists around the globe.
The car-sized rover has already been built at a cost of $450 million and was scheduled to be sent to the moon next year, when it would have used a one-meter drill to find ice beneath the lunar surface on the moon’s soil. the south pole.
Ice is considered vital to plans to build a lunar colony, not only to supply astronauts with water, but also to provide them with hydrogen and oxygen that can be used as fuel. As a result, the search for resources was rated as a priority for lunar exploration, which is planned to increase in the coming years with the goal of establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon.
Construction of Viper — the unstable test probe polar exploration rover — began several years ago, and the highly complex robotic vehicle was nearly complete when NASA announced on July 17 that it had decided to destroy it. The agency said the move was necessary because of past cost overruns, delays in launch dates and risks of future cost overruns.
However, the claim has been dismissed by shocked and angry scientists who say the rover would have played a vital role in opening the moon to human colonisation.
“Frankly, the agency’s decision beggars belief,” said Prof Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana.
“Viper is a fundamental mission on so many fronts, and its cancellation essentially undermines NASA’s entire lunar exploration program for the next decade. It’s just as straightforward. Canceling the Viper makes no sense.”
This view was supported by Ben Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, who was one of the organizers of the open letter to Congress. “A team of 500 people dedicated years of their careers to building the Viper and now it’s been canceled for no good reason,” he told watchdog last week.
“Fortunately, I think Congress is taking this issue very seriously, and they have the power to tell NASA that it needs to go ahead with the project. Hopefully they will step in.”
A data visualization in 2021 of the lunar area where the Viper was set to land. Photo: NASA/EPA
Several other missions to search for water on the Moon are planned for the next few years. However, most will involve monitoring the lunar surface from space or landing a single excavator that will dig for ice in a single, fixed location.
“The main advantage of Viper was that it could move around and dig into the lunar soil in various promising locations,” said Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck, University of London.
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Astronomers have long suspected that ice – delivered by comets and asteroids – exists in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south poles, an idea that received strong support in 2009 when NASA deliberately crashed a Centaur rocket into Cabeus Crater.
By studying the debris plumes, scientists concluded that ice may make up up to 5% of the land there. “China, Japan, India and Europe all have plans to find water on the moon, but now the US seems to have just given up,” Crawford added. “It’s very, very strange.”
Scientists also point out that ice and other materials brought to the Moon by comets or asteroids would have remained there in a pristine state and could provide scientists with a history of the inner solar system and the processes that shaped it over millions of years. or even billions of years. in the past. “There is an incredible treasure trove of science out there begging to be explored,” added Neal.
When NASA announced its decision to abandon Viper, the space agency said it planned to dismantle and reuse its components for other missions to the moon — unless other space companies or agencies offer to take over the project. More than a dozen groups have since expressed an interest in taking over Viper, a Nasa spokesman said. watchdog last week. However, it is not yet clear whether these organizations are interested in the Viper as a complete craft or as a source of components.
“We just don’t know how practical or serious these offers are,” Fernando said. “NASA keeps saying it had to cancel projects because of budget problems, but why on earth did they choose such an important mission to start making those cuts?”