The American company's lunar lander disintegrates in the Earth's atmosphere
A spacecraft headed for the moon's surface instead landed back on Earth and burned up in the planet's atmosphere Thursday afternoon.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology announced in a message on the social network X that it lost communication with its Peregrine Falcon lunar lander at 3:50 PM eastern time, indicating that it entered Earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific around 4:04 PM.
“We are awaiting independent confirmation from government authorities,” the company said.
It was an intentional, if disappointing, end to a journey that lasted ten days and covered more than half a million miles, with the spacecraft traveling along the moon's orbit before returning to Earth. But the spacecraft never got close to its landing destination on the near side of the moon.
The main payloads on the spacecraft came from NASA, part of an effort to conduct experiments on the moon at a lower cost by using commercial companies. Astrobotic's launch was the first in the program, known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS. NASA paid Astrobotic $108 million to transport five experiments.
Peregrine launched flawlessly from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 8, on the debut flight of a brand new rocket known as Vulcan. But shortly after it separated from the rocket's second stage, the propulsion system suffered a major failure and the spacecraft was unable to keep its solar panels pointed at the sun.
Astrobotic engineers managed to reorient Peregrine so that the battery could be charged. But propellant leakage made the planned moon landing impossible. The company's current hypothesis is that a valve failed to close, causing a high-pressure stream of helium to rupture a fuel tank.
Astrobotic initially estimated that Peregrine would run out of propellant and die within a few days. But as the leak subsided, the spacecraft continued to operate. All ten powered payloads, including four from NASA, were successfully powered up, demonstrating that the spacecraft's power systems were working. (The fifth NASA payload, a laser reflector, did not require power.) Other customer payloads, including a small rover built by students at Carnegie Mellon University and experiments for the German and Mexican space agencies, were also powered up.
Over the weekend, the company said the spacecraft, blown off course by the propellant leak, was on its way to burning up in Earth's atmosphere. The company said it decided to leave Peregrine on that trajectory to avoid the possibility of the crippled spacecraft colliding with satellites around Earth.
More landers are aiming for the moon.
On Friday, a Japanese robotic spacecraft currently orbiting the moon, SLIM, will attempt a moon landing. The touchdown will take place around 10:20 a.m. Eastern Time. (It will be early Saturday morning, 12:20, in Japan.)
The next NASA-funded commercial mission, by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, could launch as early as mid-February.