Yesterday, after it separated from the upper stage of the Vulcan launcher, it became clear that there is a fuel leak from the spacecraft's engines that change its balance and do not allow it to generate electricity from solar energy. The Astrobotics company says that they will try to turn it into a lunar compass, even if only for a short time * On board the spacecraft were five dedicated NASA instruments
What was supposed to be the first private lunar lander, Astrobotics' Peregrine has apparently become another failure in the lunar lander launch series.
During the day (Tuesday, 9/1/2023) the company stated that it will no longer be able to control its spacecraft for a long time. This is due to a fuel leak from the spacecraft, which makes it difficult for them to maintain the stabilization of the spacecraft. Mission life may be measured in just a few hours, the company said. It is clear that landing on the surface of the moon - the first for the US in the last fifty years - is no longer possible.
The goal now is to get Peregrine as close to the surface of the moon as possible before it loses the ability to maintain focus on the sun and loses power, Astrobotics said.
Peregrine, which weighs 1.2 tons, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday (8/1,) with the intention of landing on the northern hemisphere of the moon in late February. NASA has acquired capacity on the lander to carry five instruments designed to study the lunar surface environment in preparation for sending astronauts in the next decade. Astrobotics detected a problem immediately upon release of the spacecraft from the launcher. The engineers noticed that Peregrine was having trouble keeping its solar panels facing the sun to charge the battery. The reason for this was quickly discovered: a large leak in the propulsion system that pushed Peregrine out of stabilization. To maintain the correct direction in flight, peregrine engines have to work at an accelerated rate, consuming more of the fading fuel.
Astrobotics estimates that there are less than two days of fuel left before the reservoirs run out and the spacecraft begins to spin. When that moment comes, Peregrine, with its solar panels no longer collecting sunlight, will quickly lose power. Astrobotics is the first of three American companies to send landers to the moon this year in a new partnership with NASA. The agency buys transport services from the companies and believes that the partnership with the private sector will lead to innovation and cost reduction over time. NASA says it is prepared for some of these missions to fail. There will be great disappointment if Peregrine fails, but the goal is to launch a fleet of missions to the moon in the future to increase the chance of success.
United Space Launch Corporation (ULA) claims that from its perspective, the launch of the Peregrine lunar mission was a success. ULA is the company that provided the Vulcan Centaur launcher for the mission. According to ULA, the launcher performed as expected and successfully launched Peregrine into its target orbit around Earth. The company says it regrets the difficulties Peregrine experienced after the launch, and hopes the lessons learned from this mission will help improve future missions.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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To "wake up already": there are fewer malfunctions when you have the resources of a country investing itself in a race to the moon and launch rockets of whatever size you want to provide as much redundancy as you want. When a private company enters the business and saves money and tests in the wrong place - there are more failures. that's how it is.
Have you heard of Apollo 13?
Well, with the technology of the 60s, there was no problem of fuel leakage at all. And there was no problem landing people there. Anyone who doesn't understand that there is a serious logical fallacy here has a serious brainwashing problem.