Blue Origin solely bidder for brand spanking new VIPER lander award

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin was the only real bidder for a NASA job order that revived a canceled lunar rover mission.

NASA introduced Sept. 19 it had chosen Blue Origin to ship the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the moon’s south polar area in late 2027. The rover will fly on the second mission of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander.

The award got here by means of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program. Many had been stunned as a result of NASA had beforehand awarded a CLPS job order to Astrobotic to ship VIPER on its Griffin lander. The company stored that job order when it canceled VIPER in July 2024, citing price and schedule overruns.

NASA had not publicly signaled plans to make use of CLPS to safe a brand new trip for VIPER. A July 25 presentation by Mark Clampin, deputy affiliate administrator for science, to the National Academies’ Space Studies Board didn’t listing the CS-7 job order amongst previous and future CLPS missions operating by means of 2029.

In a response to SpaceInformation, the company mentioned it reviewed choices from April to June for alternative routes to ship VIPER. In May, NASA ended plans for a industrial partnership, saying it was exploring “alternative approaches.”

NASA in the end adopted a “base plus option” construction, with an preliminary award for design work and an possibility for the touchdown mission. Exercising that possibility will rely upon Blue Moon’s modifications to accommodate VIPER and on a profitable touchdown of Blue Moon’s first mission, scheduled for as quickly as late this yr. The complete worth of the duty order is $190 million.

“In July, NASA queried the CLPS vendor pool to determine vendors had the capability to meet NASA’s specific requirements for delivery of VIPER to the moon,” the company mentioned. “Based on the results of that query, NASA issued to the CLPS vendors a Request for Task Order Proposals in August.”

NASA mentioned just one proposal got here in, from Blue Origin. “The agency evaluated the submission in accordance with standard procurement procedures and determined it met NASA’s requirements, leading to this award.”

Blue Origin might have been the one viable possibility. VIPER weighs 450 kilograms, too massive for smaller landers which have already gone to the moon akin to Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost or Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C.

Astrobotic declined to bid on CS-7 with Griffin. “Given the compressed timeline of the CS-7 mission and our commitments to existing customers, Astrobotic made the strategic decision not to submit a bid,” the corporate mentioned Sept. 19.

SpaceX can be a part of the CLPS program however has but to win a CLPS job order for its Starship lunar lander, a model of which can carry astronauts by means of NASA’s Human Landing System program.

Nicky Fox, NASA affiliate administrator for science, supplied few particulars in regards to the Blue Origin choice when requested at a Sept. 21 press convention in regards to the upcoming launch of three area climate missions.

“At the time, we did not have a path forward for the VIPER mission with a lander,” she mentioned of the 2024 cancellation. “We’ve gone through a number of steps to find the right ride. It was solicited through a CLPS payload call, so our CLPS vendors were able to propose and we were very excited about the successful proposal coming in from Blue Origin.”

Reviving VIPER additionally creates staffing challenges. NASA instructed SpaceInformation that personnel assigned to VIPER had been reassigned to different work in March.

“With this CS-7 award, NASA will initiate and staff a new, follow-on project to operate VIPER on the moon and conduct measurements using VIPER’s science instruments,” the company mentioned. That undertaking might be based mostly at Ames Research Center, which managed the unique VIPER effort, with assist from Johnson Space Center. “NASA has not yet defined whether the scope of this new operations effort will be the same as the originally planned VIPER project.”

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