Peregrine won’t be the first private spacecraft to land on the moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander will not win the private lunar race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The spacecraft suffered a serious anomaly in its propulsion system yesterday (January 8), shortly after it was launched into space by United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket. The problem will prevent Peregrine from traveling to the moon as planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Unfortunately, it appears that a failure in the propulsion system is causing a critical loss of fuel. The team is working to try to stabilize this loss. Still, given the situation, we are prioritizing maximizing the science and data we can gather by evaluating what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time,” Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic wrote in an update on X (formerly known as Twitter) today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The launch of Peregrine was an essential moment in spaceflight. It marked the flawless debut of the mighty Vulcan Centaur, which will replace the ULA Atlas V workhorse and Delta rockets. And it ushered in a new era of private lunar exploration- or at least it was supposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peregrine flew as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which places the agency’s scientific payloads on private robotic lunar vehicles. During this flight, the lander carried five NASA payloads, including a radiation detector and several spectrometers, one of which was designed to search for evidence of underground water ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NASA believes that using private spacecraft in this way will allow it to perform various lunar explorations quickly and cost-effectively, helping the agency prepare for crewed missions to the Moon under the Artemis program. NASA also hopes that CLPS will expand the capabilities of the U.S. private space sector and stimulate the growth of the extraterrestrial economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, NASA officials have emphasized that each CLPS mission is a high-risk, high-reward. After all, no private spacecraft has ever successfully landed on the Moon, so some setbacks along the way are to be expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, the agency is taking Peregrin’s current situation in stride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Every success and failure is an opportunity to learn and grow,” said Joel Kerns, deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in an emailed statement today. “We will use this lesson to drive our efforts to advance the science, exploration, and commercial development of the Moon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NASA’s experiments are not the only payload that Peregrine was to deliver to the Moon. The lander contains 20 payloads, including Mexico’s first lunar probes and a memorial capsule from Celestis, a space burial company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inclusion of the memorial capsule has sparked objections from the Navajo Nation, whose president said that placing human remains on the Moon would desecrate a body considered sacred by many indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Celestis also placed a separate memorial payload on the upper stage of the Vulcan Centaur, which carried it into orbit around the Sun. This second payload, called Enterprise, holds a portion of the cremated remains of several Star Trek icons, including series creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Nichelle Nichols (who played Uhura), DeForest Kelly (Bones McCoy) and James Doohan (Scotty).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enterprise’s payload also contains DNA from other prominent people, including former U.S. presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nova-C, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, is the next private lunar lander to be launched under NASA’s CLPS program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nova-C is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in mid-February and land near the Moon’s south pole shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Astrobotic’s Peregrine probably won’t be the first private spacecraft to land on the Moon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[299,6,300,70,301,99],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-posadkovyj-modul","tag-nasa","tag-sapsan","tag-artemis","tag-spacex-falcon-9","tag-vulcan-centaur"],"yoast_head":"\n