The VIPER Landing Site
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- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
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- Edited by:
- David Ladd
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- Scientific consulting by:
- Anthony Colaprete
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- Produced by:
- David Ladd
- View full credits
FULL VIDEO: The VIPER team announces that its rover will be sent to the Nobile region near the Moon's South Pole to carry out its mission. Watch this video to learn more.
Music Provided by Universal Production Music: “The Butterfly Effect” – David Thomas Connolly
This video can also be viewed on YouTube.
NASA's first lunar mobile robot, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, will map the location and concentration of water ice and other frozen volatiles in an area west of Nobile crater, near the lunar South Pole. Understanding the distribution of water and other resources on the Moon is vital for sustaining human exploration there. Scheduled to be delivered in late 2023 as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, the rover will explore an area of about 36 square miles during its 100-day mission.
This video shows where VIPER is going and explains the four main criteria for choosing the landing site: Earth visibility for two-way communications between the Moon and Earth, sunlight for power and thermal regulation, the potential presence of water and other resources, and terrain that is well-suited for VIPER to navigate.
For More Information
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Music Provided by Universal Production Music: "The Butterfly Effect" – David Thomas Connolly
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Visualizer
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
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Video editor
- David Ladd (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Anthony Colaprete (NASA/ARC-SST) [Lead]
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Producers
- David Ladd (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.) [Lead]
- Katie L. Cousins (ARC-DO)
- Kayvon E. Sharghi (ARC-DO)
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Narrator
- David Ladd (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.)
Datasets used in this visualization
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LRO DEM (Digital Elevation Map)
ID: 653
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.