NASA gave up a ride to the Moon. This Startup’s Robotic Rover Did It.
NASA rethinking VIPER has opened the door for someone else who wants to ride to the Moon to book. Astrobotic’s trip to the moon is still scheduled for later in this year, even though its cargo has been canceled. On Wednesday, Venturi Astrolab Inc., a small startup, announced that it had taken advantage of the opportunity to accelerate the development of its own lunar rover. The two companies, despite their similar names are not related. Many people within and outside NASA were confused by the cancellation VIPER because the rover was completed, despite being over budget and behind schedule. The rover only needed one final round of testing to be ready for launch. NASA officials said that instead, the finished rover would be disassembled.
In addition, they said NASA would still pay $323 million to Astrobotic. Thus, canceling the mission would save NASA a relatively paltry amount — $84 million — after it had spent about $800 million.
For its fee, Astrobotic would conduct the mission as planned, but the lander spacecraft, known as Griffin, would carry a nonfunctional dummy weight instead of VIPER.
NASA officials said that for Astrobotic to perform the landing successfully was in itself a valuable exercise, and that the company was free to sell the payload space on Griffin to another customer if it could, replacing the dummy weight.
“We had more than 60 organizations from around the world knock on our door,” said John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic.
Astrolab, he said, was the best match. “They were able to move quickly,” said Mr. Thornton. The rover Astrolab will use on this mission has a similar size to VIPER. Mr. Matthews declined to say how much Astrolab was paying Astrobotic.
Astrolab is developing a rover the size of a Jeep Wrangler that could autonomously drive cargo or people across the moon’s surface. FLEX is too large and heavy to be fitted on Astrobotic’s Lander. Astrolab already reserved space on Starship for FLEX. This is the massive spacecraft being developed by SpaceX. Elon Musk founded the rocket company. The goal is to study how to minimize the problems caused by angular, sharp particles of lunar dirt.
Mr. Matthews said FLIP would also carry a couple of commercial payloads that would be announced later.
Despite Astrobotic’s failure last year, Mr. Matthews said he had confidence in Astrobotic. He said that from his perspective, the FLIP was a way for him to reduce risk in future missions. We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t fully trust Astrobotic. Thornton stated that the last year was a time of reflection for the company. He said, “It is like the old saying ‘Whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger’.” “I believe in this case it did.” NASA requested and received proposals for the continuation of the mission without NASA’s additional investment.
The Agency expects to reach a decision by this summer. The new Trump administration has shown more interest in Mars rather than the moon. This could all change very soon. Thornton stated that Astrobotic is not worried about this possibility. He said that there was a lot going on in Washington. Mr. Matthews stated that Astrolab would pivot if NASA made a sudden turn towards Mars.
