NASA selects company to deliver ‘water-hunting’ robot to the moon

The Pittsburgh-based company will receive $199.5 million under the new fixed-price contract, which tasks the company with building and testing a lander spacecraft that can ferry NASA’s robotic rover, VIPER, to the lunar surface.

VIPER, which stands for “Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover,” will be a 1,000 pound four-wheeled rover that will spend 100 days on the Moon searching for water ice. Learning to find and harvest ice on the Moon could be transformative for space exploration — and for commercial companies that see outer space as a prime place to do business.

Water ice can be converted into drinking water or oxygen that could be essential for establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon. Water can also be converted to rocket fuel by separating the hydrogen and oxygen molecules, allowing NASA or a commercial company to set up a rocket fueling outpost that could allow vehicles to explore deeper into the cosmos.

It’s been nearly half a century since a US-made spacecraft — robotic or crewed — has landed on the lunar surface. NASA has been heavily focused on hastening the return of lunar exploration under the directive of Vice President Mike Pence, who said last year that the space agency should return humans to the moon by 2024 “by any means necessary.”

A key part of the space agency’s plan is to rely extensively on public-private partnerships to spur innovation and cut costs. The space agency is handing out fixed-price contracts to commercial companies to take over much of the development process for various vehicles, including lunar landers. That’s a far different approach than NASA took during its previous lunar programs, including Apollo, the space agency worked with private corporations but kept much of the design and testing processes in-house.