2024-01-09 01:43:24
The United States launched a new mission to the Moon on Monday with the new Vulcan Centaur rocket. But shortly following takeoff, an “anomaly” occurred on the Peregrine device, announced the private company Astrobotic, which specifies that the lander is now losing fuel in flight.
Published on: 01/09/2024 – 02:43 Modified on: 01/09/2024 – 02:45
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The first landing of an American spacecraft on the Moon in more than 50 years will probably have to wait: a private lander encountered an “anomaly” shortly following takeoff on Monday, and is now losing fuel in flight, the company Astrobotic said having developed it.
The lander took off from Florida before dawn on Monday January 8, aboard the new Vulcan Centaur rocket from the ULA group, which brings together Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The device, named Peregrine, was powered up shortly following separation from the rocket, and communication was successfully established. But “unfortunately, an anomaly occurred,” Astrobotic explained in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). This initially prevented the company from reorienting the device towards the Sun, so that it might recharge its batteries using its solar panels.
(2/4)The disturbance of the MLI is the first visual clue that aligns with our telemetry data pointing to a propulsion system anomaly.
— Astrobotic (@astrobotic) January 8, 2024
An “improvised maneuver” was ultimately successful and “the ship’s battery is now full,” the company later said. However, she added that the problem was the result of a problem with the propulsion system, causing “a critical loss” of fuel.
Astrobotic published an image showing part of the exterior of the device, visibly damaged: a photo which supports the hypothesis of a propulsion problem, according to the company, which promised news later in the evening.
“We are using existing energy to perform as many ship and cargo operations as possible,” she added without elaborating.
The ambition to become the first private company to land on the Moon
Peregrine was developed by Astrobotic with the support of NASA, which commissioned the company to transport scientific equipment to the Moon – a $108 million contract.
Astrobotic hoped to become the first private company to successfully land on the Moon, and the first American spacecraft to do so since the end of the Apollo program. The moon landing attempt was scheduled for February 23.
In recent years, Israeli and Japanese companies have also attempted to land on the moon, but these missions ended in crashes.
Astrobotic boss John Thornton said he was aware of the risks of failure during a press conference on Friday.
A series of lunar missions supported by NASA
The stakes of this flight were also high for NASA. The launch inaugurated a series of lunar missions supported by the American space agency, eager to encourage the development of a lunar economy. A failure of the mission will not fail to raise questions regarding this new strategy from NASA, which wishes to rely partly on the private sector for its lunar ambitions.
“Spaceflight is a daring adventure,” NASA boss Bill Nelson reacted on X. “NASA will continue to expand its reach into the cosmos with our commercial partners.”
The space agency has contracted with several companies, including Astrobotic, to send scientific equipment to the Moon. The program, called CLPS, provides companies with crucial financing. Another selected company, Intuitive Machines, is also scheduled to launch for the Moon in mid-February with a SpaceX rocket.
This strategy should allow NASA “to make the trip more often, more quickly and for less money,” explained Joel Kearns, a senior official within the space agency. “The success of all attempts is not assured,” he admitted. “What we have asked of the industry is very difficult to do.”
A controversial mission
To date, only four nations – the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India – have successfully landed a craft on the Moon.
A mission from the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) is also due to attempt to land on the moon in regarding two weeks. Russia, for its part, spectacularly missed a moon landing this summer.
Thanks to the instruments sent, NASA was to study radiation as well as the composition of the lunar surface in an area never before explored up close. For NASA, this involves preparing the return of astronauts to our natural satellite, which it is planning with its Artemis program.
Also read: NASA’s Parker probe is preparing to brush close to the Sun in 2024
But the space agency was not the only customer on board, and the mission also caused controversy: Among the private customer cargoes transported are the ashes or DNA of dozens of people, including those of the creator of the famous science fiction television series Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry. A partnership with the Celestis company, specializing in “commemorative spaceflights”.
Sending these ashes to the Moon aroused the anger of the Navajo Native American tribe, which denounced the “desecration of a sacred place” for “many Native American cultures”, without however obtaining the postponement of the launch.
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