The Peregrine spacecraft — launched last week in the first U.S. mission to pursue a moon landing in more than 50 years — is on its way back to Earth and is expected to make a fiery return after a critical fuel leak scuppered its lunar ambitions.
The failed moon landing attempt is a setback for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which is recruiting private companies to help the space agency explore the lunar surface as it aims to return humans to the moon later this decade.
Astrobotic Technology, the company that developed the Peregrine lander under a $108 million contract with NASA, revealed Sunday that it had made the decision to dispose of the spacecraft by allowing it to disintegrate in mid-air as it plummeted back to Earth.
“While we believe it is possible that the spacecraft could continue to operate for several weeks and could possibly have increased the orbit to miss Earth, we must take into account the abnormal condition of the propulsion system and capabilities on board the use vehicle to end the mission. responsibly and safely,” according to an update on the Pittsburgh-based company’s website. “We do not believe that Peregrine’s return will pose any safety risks and that the spacecraft will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.”
The Peregrine vehicle’s impending demise comes after the spacecraft faced challenges on its way to the moon, including an “anomaly” that caused the solar-powered battery to point away from the sun and the fuel leak that left the spacecraft without enough enough propellant to complete its mission. planned mission to land softly on the moon’s surface.
It is not yet clear what caused the leak.
Astrobotic and NASA are expected to provide further updates on the mission at a press conference on Thursday at noon ET.
“It is a great honor to witness firsthand the heroic efforts of our mission control team who overcame enormous challenges to recover and operate the spacecraft,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said in a statement on Sunday. “I look forward to sharing these, and more, remarkable stories after the mission concludes on January 18. This mission has already taught us so much and has given me great confidence that our next mission to the moon will achieve a soft landing.”
Disposable options
Astrobotic had other options to destroy the Peregrine lander.
The spacecraft could have been left to the cosmos, destined to spend eternity in the dark expanse. But the company said it was abandoning that route because of the “risk that our damaged spacecraft could cause a problem.” The Peregrine lander would essentially become a piece of uncontrolled debris, capable of crashing into other objects in space, such as operational satellites.
The company may also have considered crash-landing the Peregrine vehicle on the moon, as many spacecraft have done — intentionally and unintentionally — during lunar missions in recent years.
When it returns to Earth, the vehicle will be destroyed as it crashes into the planet’s thick atmosphere at high speeds. The company said the decision to bring back Peregrine came after receiving “input from the space community and the U.S. government on the safest and responsible course of action.”
Critical errors
If Peregrine had reached the moon, it could have been the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
But the company acknowledged just hours after its spacecraft launched on January 8 that a soft landing on the moon would not be possible.
Astrobotic then changed course and attempted to operate the vehicle as a satellite while its tanks were empty.
Peregrine’s fuel leak slowed in the days after launch, allowing the spacecraft to lumber along for thousands of miles.
For the vast majority of the mission, the Peregrine lander was controlled solely by its thrusters, small engines mounted on the side of the lander and designed to maintain stability or make precision movements.
At one point, the company said it was able to briefly fire up one of the spacecraft’s main engines, which are designed to provide up to three bursts of power to push the Peregrine lander further toward the moon after it reaches space reaches.
But the fuel leak made sustained, controlled combustion of the main engines impossible, Astrobotic said.
On Monday, the company said the spacecraft was about 218,000 miles (351,000 kilometers) from Earth.
What Peregrine could and could not achieve
Astrobotic was able to power up a number of scientific instruments and other payloads aboard the lander.
Two of NASA’s five payloads — the Neutron Spectrometer System and the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer — were able to collect data on radiation levels in space, the space agency announced in a Jan. 11 news release. Although NASA had hoped to make these measurements on the moon’s surface — where it plans to return astronauts later this decade — space agency officials indicated the data was still valuable.
The Peregrine lander was also able to activate a new sensor developed by NASA that was designed to help the spacecraft land on the moon. Called the Navigation Doppler Lidar, it uses lasers and the Doppler effect – which uses wave frequencies to measure distances – to create precise navigation.
“Measurements and operations of the NASA-provided onboard science instruments will provide valuable experience, technical knowledge and scientific data for future CLPS lunar deliveries,” Joel Kearns, deputy assistant administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement .
But at least one of NASA’s science instruments – the Laser Retroreflector Array – failed to function. The LRA is a collection of eight prisms embedded in aluminum that can reflect lasers and transmit precise locations. NASA engineers designed the array to become a permanent part of the moon and help other spacecraft orient their locations.
Likewise, a series of other payloads specifically designed to operate on the moon remain stuck aboard the Peregrine lander. These include a rover developed at Carnegie Mellon University and five small robots from the Mexican Space Agency designed to be catapulted to the moon’s surface.
The Peregrine spacecraft also carries various mementos, letters and even human remains that customers paid to fly on the mission.
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