NASA’s cancelled moon rover calls 2026 crewed landing into question

A fully constructed rover that was due to blast off to the moon next year will instead be dismantled due to budgetary issues, NASA has announced – leading researchers to question whether the space agency is truly committed to landing a crewed spacecraft on the moon in 2026, as it currently claims.

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) was scheduled to be sent to the moon’s south pole in September 2025 to hunt for water ice. Equipped with a drill, the rover would have looked for ice under the lunar surface in multiple locations, including in some permanently shadowed craters.

On 17 July, however, NASA announced it was cancelling the mission. “Decisions like this are never easy,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. “But in this case, the projected remaining expenses for VIPER would have resulted in having to either cancel or disrupt many other missions. So we’ve made the decision to forego this particular mission.”

NASA has already spent $450 million on the rover and the cancellation is expected to only save $84 million. The agency says it is open to “expressions of interest from US industry and international partners” to purchase VIPER, but if this doesn’t happen by 1 August, it will be disassembled with a view to reusing its parts on future missions.

Phil Metzger at the University of Central Florida says the cancellation is a “very bad mistake” for NASA, especially in light of the agency’s broader goal to land humans at the south pole of the moon in 2026 as part of its Artemis programme. Plans to potentially use the moon’s water ice as a resource for rocket fuel could also be under threat. “Having a rover with a drill is an absolutely vital part of the mission,” says Metzger. “There definitely will be some effect on planning the human missions.”

VIPER’s cancellation also means that China may get a leg-up in the hunt for resources on the moon. Its upcoming uncrewed Chang’e 7 and Chang’e 8 missions, in 2026 and 2028 respectively, will target the moon’s south pole to look for water ice.

Grant Tremblay at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says the cancellation highlights the budgetary issues facing NASA and other US government agencies, with NASA receiving 8.5 per cent less funding this year than it requested, at just short of $25 billion. “This is a perfect illustrative indication about how every single budget wedge at NASA is on fire,” says Tremblay. “NASA cannot print money.”

Other NASA missions, such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Mars Sample Return mission to return rocks from the Red Planet, have also faced cuts or cancellations in the wake of dwindling budgets. “I have absolutely no doubt that more bad news is in the pipeline,” says Tremblay.