The American commercial lunar lander will not reach its destination. On Monday, after launch, there was indeed a fuel leak. “Unfortunately, there is no possibility of achieving a soft landing on the moon,” says space company Astrobotic, which designed and built the Peregrine lander.
The liftoff itself went smoothly, but in space the craft was unable to point its solar panels at the sun due to the leak. Without sunlight, the machine cannot produce electricity. Flight control managed to solve the solar panel problem from Earth, but the same problem recurred later.
A larger lander later
Peregrine was scheduled to land on the lunar surface in late February. No commercial lander has ever successfully arrived there. An attempt by a Japanese space company failed again last year. Only the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India managed to successfully land landers on the Moon. Astrobotic wants to contribute to new manned missions to the Moon and has received tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from the American space agency NASA for this purpose.
According to Astrobotic, the Peregrine has about forty hours of fuel left. This means the mission will end on Thursday. Until then, the company wants to gather as much information as possible. This data could be used for the next mission.
By the end of this year, Astrobotic wants to bring a larger lander with an uncrewed rover on board to the Moon. He will look for traces of water ice at the Moon’s south pole. This could help lay the foundation for the latter.
2024-01-10 11:00:47
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