SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket — the same booster type that once sent the "Starman" mannequin to space in a Tesla Roadster — will send the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the moon, on private company Astrobotic's lunar landing system. .
As with previous Falcon Heavy missions, SpaceX will launch VIPER from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center near Orlando, Florida — a longtime launching location of moon missions, including the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972.
Related: NASA picks SpaceX Falcon Heavy to launch 1st Gateway station pieces to the moon.
Key among the Artemis program's goals is to learn how to live off the moon sustainably, potentially using resources such as lunar water ice at the moon's south pole to help astronauts and machinery function adequately for longer missions on the lunar surface.
Astrobotic received a task order from NASA in 2020 to send VIPER to the same approximate region as the first planned lunar landing mission with astronauts, called Artemis 3, in the south pole region of the moon.
The mission plan calls for the Falcon Heavy to launch Astrobotic's Griffin lunar lander towards the moon; Griffin will then touch down on the surface and provide a platform from which VIPER can disembark to move around autonomously.
No American hardware has landed softly on the moon for decades, but VIPER could be Astrobotic's second effort if its Peregrine lander touches down safely in July at Lacus Mortis, a hexagonal-shaped plain on the near side of moon.
"SpaceX's Falcon Heavy completes our … solution by providing a proven launch vehicle to carry us on our trajectory to the moon.
(450 kilograms) VIPER; Astrobotic's overall fixed-cost contract with NASA for the mission is $199.5 million, covering everything from launch to landing
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