A private US lunar lander that has been hemorrhaging fuel since an onboard explosion at the start of its journey is somehow still chugging along, snapping selfies and running science instruments as it travels through space.
Although Astrobotic, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, company that built the Peregrine robot, has said a controlled touchdown on the moon is no longer possible, it has not ruled out a “hard landing” or crash — a prospect that has space watchers gripped.
“Peregrine has now been operating in space for more than 4 days,” Astrobotic wrote on Friday in its latest update posted on X, adding that it remained “stable and operational.”
Photo: AFP
The rate of fuel loss has steadily diminished as the pressure inside its tank drops, meaning the company has been able to extend the spacecraft’s life far longer than it initially thought possible.
Meanwhile, the US, German and Mexican space agencies have powered on the scientific instruments they wanted to run on the moon.
“Measurements and operations of the NASA-provided science instruments on board will provide valuable experience, technical knowledge and scientific data to future CLPS [commercial lunar payload services] lunar deliveries,” NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Joel Kearns said.
CLPS is the experimental NASA program under which the space agency paid Astrobotic more than US$100 million to ship its hardware on Peregrine, as part of a strategy to seed a commercial lunar economy and reduce its own overheads.
Astrobotic is the third private entity to have failed in a soft landing, following an Israeli nonprofit and a Japanese company.
Although it has not worked out this time, NASA officials have made clear their strategy of “more shots on goal” means more chances to score, and the next attempt, by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, launches next month.
Astrobotic would get another chance in November with its Griffin lander transporting NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the lunar south pole. For now, the company is staying tight-lipped on Peregrine’s intended destination, leaving enthusiasts to make their own calculations.
Amateur astronomer Tony Dunn used publicly available data provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to plot out the spaceship’s current course, posting a graphic on X showing it would collide with the moon on Jan. 23.
“It’s really anybody’s guess as to what is actually going to happen because of the leaking fuel,” which could easily push it off course, he said.
Astrobotic could intentionally point Peregrine another way, such as flying by the moon and shooting for interplanetary space.
While a hard lunar landing might satisfy some of Astrobotic’s customers, such as those flying human ashes and DNA to the moon, it could anger others like the Navajo Nation, which had called that cargo a “desecration” of the celestial body.
“I think it would be a shame if they completed their failed mission by littering the surface of the moon with debris,” said Justin Walsh, a professor of art history, archeology and space studies at Chapman University and Ad Astra Fellow at the University of Southern California.
He added that humanity had left about 180 tonnes of material on the surface since the first Soviet impactor crashed in 1959.
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