On this occasion, everything went as planned: the ship Pilgrim from the Astrobotic company has disintegrated once morest the Earth’s atmosphere somewhere north of New Zealand, over the South Pacific, following 11 days of space travel. The module, which aspired to be the first privately owned one to land on the Moon, had taken off from Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA) on January 8 aboard the new rocket Vulcan. But a few hours following takeoff, Astrobotic reported a fatal anomaly in its propulsion systems that prevented it from successfully achieving its objective. Since it had enough fuel to maneuver, the company, NASA and the US Government decided to destroy the ship once morest Earth instead of leaving it wandering as space junk.
“As expected, Astrobotic lost the ship’s telemetry signal Pilgrim a las 3:50 EST [21.50 del jueves, hora peninsular española]”, he pointed out in a statement. “While that indicates that the vehicle completed its controlled re-entry over open water at 4:04 EST [22.04 hora peninsular española]”We await independent confirmation from government organizations.” Telescopes in Australia and the United Arab Emirates captured the movement of the device approaching the Earth, but at this time of Friday morning there were no images of the flash expected when it collided with the atmosphere.
“The team has been continuously monitoring our re-entry analysis with NASA,” Astrobotic said in a statement on Thursday, “which indicates a re-entry trajectory over the indicated area, with no danger expected.” “Safe reentry is our top priority,” the company explained, so the team developed a two-step maneuver to establish the trajectory towards the South Pacific using its main engines. “The procedures that the team carried out were to minimize the risk of the remains reaching the ground,” said Astrobotic, who remained in communication with the authorities and with NASA, the space agency with which he will offer a press conference on Friday.
Before carrying out these maneuvers, the Pilgrim took a video selfie with the Earth in the background when it was a few kilometers from its end.
The Peregrino 1 mission, the first American lander since the Apollo era, is part of a new program of launches carried out by private companies with the support of NASA. More of these public-private launches will come in the coming months, both with Astrobotic and other companies, such as Intuitive Machines (of Houston), which will launch a lunar lander aboard a SpaceX rocket in February.
(2/2)Peregrine captured this video moments following successful separation from @ulalaunch Vulcan rocket. Counterclockwise from top left center is the DHL MoonBox, Astroscale’s Pocari Sweat Lunar Dream Time Capsule, & Peregrine landing leg. Background: our big blue marble, Earth! pic.twitter.com/1y4OsosNDp
— Astrobotic (@astrobotic) January 19, 2024
All the devices traveling on board the ship, from different institutions around the world, have been lost with the ship. There were NASA tools, but other more controversial objects also traveled: the mortal remains of dozens of humans sent by the American space burial company Elysium Space, such as those of three United States presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F.Kennedy. All those remains were vaporized with the Pilgrim.
This setback occurs in the midst of an intense space race towards the Moon that shows how the winning axis is shifting towards new actors. The United States has not landed on the Moon for five decades, Russia crashed its ship a few months ago and private attempts in recent years, by Israel and Japan, also failed. Meanwhile, in the last decade, China has successfully landed three devices and India just achieved it. Japan tries once more this Friday, and if successful, it will become the fifth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States, India and China.
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