IFPTE and AFGE Request Congressional Appropriators Continue NASA's VIPER Lunar Rover Mission

This week IFPTE and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), sent House and Senate Appropriations Committees a letter urging them to direct NASA to continue supporting the VIPER mission.

VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a lunar rover developed by IFPTE Local 30 members at NASA's Ames Research Center along with AFGE members at NASA's Johnson Space Center, along with other IFPTE and AFGE members across the space agency. VIPER's mission is to explore the moon's south pole and search for lunar ice. This mission is critical for understanding the origin of water in our solar system and also for possibly utilizing the moon's natural resources for human space exploration of the moon and Mars.

In mid-July 2024, NASA canceled VIPER to cost overruns and delays attributed to the contractor, even though NASA employees have completed work on building the rover on time and on budget and the rover is far along in final testing and evaluation. The cancelation means the completed VIPER will not be on the lander that still expected to land on the lunar South Pole next year, but without the VIPER rover.

The Joint IFPTE-AFGE letter reminds House and Senate appropriators that VIPER has strategic significance for NASA and our nation, and that canceling VIPER will harm the engineering and scientific expertise at NASA. The letter states, "canceling this mission may harm America’s global leadership in space, put at risk our national priority of long-term human-led scientific discovery in deep space, and will lead to the loss of NASA’s scientific and engineering talent. The U.S. is in a space race and without the VIPER mission moving forward, the U.S. could lose out to China’s space program, which is expected to land a robotic rover in the lunar South Pole in 2026. VIPER is not only critical for furthering scientific understanding of our solar system, but is also a key part of NASA’s Moon to Mars architecture, sustaining human presence on the Moon, and understanding volatiles, namely ice water, that could be utilized for space habitation and human exploration."

IFPTE and AFGE local leaders and legislative staff will continue to engage with Members of Congress to support a path forward for VIPER.

Separately, IFPTE is contacting lawmakers to explore alternatives for continuing the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing-1, or OSAM-1, which NASA canceled in early September.

Read the letter to House and Senate Appropriations Leadership here.