The company behind the first U.S. commercial moon lander says there is now no chance of a successful landing on the lunar surface after the spacecraft suffered a propellant leak.
“Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the Moon,” said Astrobotic Technology, in a statement Tuesday. “However, we do still have enough propellant to continue to operate the vehicle as a spacecraft. The team has updated its estimates, and we currently expect to run out of propellant in about 40 hours from now — an improvement from last night’s estimate.”
The company is now eyeing its next lunar landing mission, dubbed Griffin. “The team continues to work to find ways to extend Peregrine’s operational life,” Astrobotic added. “We are in a stable operating mode and are working payload and spacecraft tests and checkouts. We continue receiving valuable data and proving spaceflight operations for components and software relating to our next lunar lander mission, Griffin.”
The Peregrine lander, which launched Monday, ran into problems a few hours into its mission. The lander was expected to reach the lunar surface on Feb. 23, conducting a series of NASA experiments.
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The Peregrine lunar lander launched atop the first Vulcan rocket early Monday, successfully separating from the rocket’s Centaur upper stage about 51 minutes after launch. Peregrine’s goal was to enter into orbit more than 220,000 miles above Earth, where it was supposed to intercept the moon.
But sometime after separation, “an anomaly then occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation,” the company said in a statement released about seven hours after launch.
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The company subsequently described a failure in the lander’s propulsion system as the apparent cause of the anomaly, placing the moon mission in jeopardy.
The Peregrine mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative to deliver science and technology to the moon’s surface. Peregrine, which is carrying NASA scientific instruments to study the lunar surface.
“We are working with @Astrobotic to identify the root cause of the propulsion issue and evaluate how it affects NASA’s five science investigations aboard the spacecraft,” tweeted NASA Monday. “Space is hard.”
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Peregrine is also carrying a payload from Celestis Memorial Spaceflights, which sends cremated human remains into space. The payload is dubbed the Tranquility Flight. Celestis did not return a request for comment on the Peregrine lunar lander anomaly.
Other countries have been ramping up their efforts to send landers to the moon, with a Japanese spacecraft set to reach the lunar surface later this month. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) was launched Sept. 6 from the Tanegashima Space Center. The lander was successfully inserted into lunar orbit at 12:51 am ET on Dec. 25, according to the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and is expected to land on the lunar surface at 10:20 am ET on Jan. 19.
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While the Peregrine lunar lander has faced problems on its mission to the moon, the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket was a success. The CERT-1 flight test marked an important milestone for SpaceX rival United Launch Alliance, which was set up in 2006 as a joint venture between Boeing Co.
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and Lockheed Martin Corp.
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“Congrats to @ulalaunch on the first flight of #Vulcan!” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Monday.
“MAJOR congratulations to the @ulalaunch team who successfully launched the first ever #VulcanRocket this morning! We can’t wait to see more of these epic rockets in action,” tweeted Lockheed Martin Space on Monday.
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