- Astrobotic’s lunar lander faces fuel leak
- Soft landing on Moon impossible
- NASA’s lunar missions impacted
Due to a fuel leak, an American lunar lander has “no chance” of achieving a soft landing on the Moon, according to the mission’s sponsoring organization.
Astrobotic, based in Pittsburgh, reported that its Peregrine lander had sufficient propellant to function as a spacecraft.
The spacecraft is anticipated to deplete its fuel supply in approximately forty hours, the company reported Tuesday shortly after 17:00 GMT.
Peregrine encountered difficulties almost immediately after descending from its launch rocket on Monday.
“A soft landing on the Moon is regrettably impossible due to the propellant leak,” Astrobotic said in a statement published on X, formerly Twitter.
“The team has revised its estimates, and we now anticipate that propellant will run out in approximately forty hours; this is an improvement over the estimate from last night.”
The group persists in its efforts to identify strategies that will prolong the operational lifespan of Peregrine.
On Monday at 02:18 ET (07:18 GMT), the 1.2-tonne spacecraft was deployed from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the intended date of touchdown being late February.
However, during the initial hours of its trajectory, engineers observed that the lander-to-be Moon was encountering difficulties maintaining the orientation of its solar panels towards the Sun in order to recharge its battery.
Astrobotic identified a significant failure in the propulsion system as the root cause of Peregrine’s misalignment.
In order to sustain the intended trajectory during flight, Peregrine’s thrusters are presently operating at increased workloads, thereby further depleting the limited fuel supply.
Peregrine’s Lunar Landing Imminent Crisis
Astrobotic estimates that the spacecraft has less than two days’ worth of propellant remaining before depleting its reserves and initiating a descent.
As soon as that moment occurs, Peregrine will experience a rapid loss of power because its solar panels will no longer be capturing sunlight.
It had become evident even prior to Tuesday’s announcement from Astrobotic that a United States lunar surface landing, which would have been unprecedented in the past fifty years, was virtually unattainable.
NASA, an American space agency, had acquired lander capacity for five instruments designed to investigate the lunar surface environment prior to the deployment of astronauts to the moon later this decade.
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Astrobotic is the initial among three American corporations that will launch a lunar spacecraft this year in collaboration with NASA through a novel public-private entity.
In 2024, NASA, in collaboration with two additional commercial enterprises, namely Intuitive Machines and Firefly, slated to execute six lunar surface missions.
Over time, NASA anticipates that its new lunar partnership with the private sector will generate additional innovation and cost savings. Additionally, the agency asserts that it is ready for a portion of these missions to fail.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) deployed the Peregrine vessel atop its inaugural Vulcan rocket mission. A collaborative effort between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, had been developing for a period of ten years.
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