​Steady but slow: On the VIPER mission, lessons for India

In July, NASA cancelled its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission to the moon after the development was beset by delays and costs had ballooned. By this time its engineers had fully assembled it and completed some tests, but NASA held its ground. The sudden decision dismayed scientists. VIPER was designed to map the distribution of water-ice in the moon’s south pole region and the soils in which it occurred, over three months. In all, the golf-cart-sized rover was to be launched by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and deployed using Astrobotic’s ‘Griffin’ lander, all managed through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme. Landing on the moon is an expensive, time-consuming exercise. NASA’s decision to cancel VIPER at this late stage thus drew the attention of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and of the wider international community, which sees in VIPER’s absence an opportunity for China’s increasingly complex lunar programme to lead the way. The world’s rush back to the moon offers potentially significant commercial and geopolitical gains. VIPER was expected to be a pivotal component of the US-led ‘lunar axis’ defined by the Artemis Accords, which counts India among its leaders. Yet, India missed a trick when, on September 18, the Union Cabinet approved a proposal by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to begin the second phase of the country’s lunar programme with Chandrayaan-4, a sample-return mission.

Moments after the Chandrayaan-3 lander descended on the moon’s surface on August 23, 2023, reports erupted to claim India had yet again admitted itself into a small, elite group of countries that have achieved an autonomous lunar soft-landing. But such proclamations overlook the considerable gaps between these countries’ space agencies from an operations perspective. One pertinent difference is that ISRO is unable to execute multiple flagship missions in parallel. Instead, it follows a ‘one major mission at a time’ cadence that, in exchange for maximising resource use efficiency, leaves the organisation incapable of manoeuvring rapidly to respond to new opportunities. Had it been able, ISRO could have sought the Cabinet’s approval for the ‘Lunar Polar Explorer’ mission it is planning with its Japanese counterpart, to land a rover on the moon to perform many of the crucial tasks VIPER was expected to, especially prospecting for large water-ice deposits. Even now, the VIPER incident should remind the Centre that despite an expanding allocation and new funding modes in the offing, the Indian space programme needs more resources to realise its full potential.