Despite cancelling the rover that would have traveled on Astrobotic Technology's Griffin lander, NASA will fulfill its approximately $267 million contract with the North Shore-based company by transporting a mass simulator in its place. But Astrobotic hopes to transport something more.
"We would rather send something that is more significant and meaningful, so that's why we're going to be taking a look at the potential to accommodate other payloads on board the vehicle," CEO John Thornton said. "What NASA said yesterday is that they would simply reduce the size of the mass simulator that they give us to accommodate another payload if we were to find another payload that can line up with the timeline and technical capability with the lander."
NASA reevaluated the VIPER rover because it was internally over budget and would have had an impact on the agency's availability to fund other projects. Astrobotic learned of this shortly before NASA made the announcement publicly.
Afterward, Thornton said that the company began receiving payload inquiries from "all over the world," but is not currently able to disclose any. The company is evaluating them to see what is feasible — the lander being designed for VIPER places limitations on what can be transferred.
"With VIPERs removal, that frees up a lot of payload capacity on the vehicle, so technically it is viable to send things, but the hardest part is the timing of the program and how far along we are with the design," Thornton said. "We want to make sure that it's developed enough so that we won't have a technical issue or a mission risk for Griffin... it's a tough balance, we're going to take a hard look."
In addition to possible outsourced payloads, the company is considering utilizing the lander to demonstrate a test of its experimental lunar power grid service, named LunaGrid.
The Griffin lander will launch "no earlier than September 2025" on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, which are a part of the larger Falcon Heavy rocket, are currently grounded under review by the FAA, but the company has indicated it expects to resumes launches soon.
"We have a contract with SpaceX to fly this lander aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle," Thornton said. "We're going to be talking to them and we don't expect to change launch vehicles, but we are certainly going to be talking with them on any updates to the timeline and what might change with the launch itself."
Despite VIPER's cancellation and the company's previous lander failing to make contact, the team is pressing ahead for the long term.
"We're working hard to win the next proposal from NASA, we have a proposal in right now that they are evaluating for the next mission to go to the moon," Thornton said. "We're going to propose for the next opportunity after that and the next opportunity after that. It's just business as usual on that side of the house. We're going to have another flight, it's just a matter of when and where specifically NASA wants to go."
