The first US Moon landing attempt in more than 50 years appears doomed due to a “critical” fuel leak on a private company’s spacecraft.
The Peregrine lander developed by US company Astrobotic Technology was scheduled to land on the Moon on February 23, but its original mission now appears all but over.
Astrobotic had been aiming to become the first private company to successfully land on the Moon, which is something only the US, Russia, China and India’s space agencies have accomplished.
Let’s take a look at how Peregrine’s ill-fated attempt to reach the lunar surface has played out.
A successful launch, as NASA accepts the risks
The Peregrine lander was launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Monday on the back of a new rocket called Vulcan — built by Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA) with main engines from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin.
Before the flight, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration, Joel Kearns, said the US space agency was willing to accept risks which came with using private companies to make cheaper and quicker deliveries to the Moon.
“Each success and setback are opportunities to learn and grow,” he said.
Astrobiologist Dr David Flannery from the Queensland University of Technology said NASA now preferred to “contract out” Moon missions whenever it could, so that bosses could “focus their engineers and scientists on the cutting edge”.
“It’s part of a strategy of putting many eggs in many different commercial baskets, and just seeing who can do it the most reliably and the cheapest,” he said.
The solar panel problem
Vulcan manufacturers ULA declared their rocket’s launch a success once the 1.9 metre tall Peregrine lander was free of Vulcan’s upper stage, nearly an hour into the flight.
The upper stage of the rocket was boosted into a perpetual orbit around the Sun, which will reach as far out as Mars.
Soon after, Peregrine experienced a malfunction which stopped its solar panel from pointing directly towards the Sun to charge its battery.
“Unfortunately, an anomaly occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable Sun-pointing orientation,” the company said, adding that its team was working to fix the situation.
Almost two hours later, Astrobotic said it believed the cause of the solar panel issue was a “propulsion” error, which “if proven true, threatens the ability of the spacecraft to soft land on the Moon”.
The company said Peregrine’s battery was now running low.
More than an hour later, Astrobotic said it had managed to orient its lander towards the Sun so that its solar panel could charge the onboard battery.
“If you lose the ability to change the position of the spacecraft relative to the Sun, everything will stop working once the batteries run out,” Dr Flannery said.
“There have been several missions that have failed because solar panels either didn’t deploy properly or because they became covered in dust.”
‘Critical’ fuel loss threatens the mission
Half an hour after confirming its solar panel problem had been rectified, Astrobotic said its spacecraft was suffering “a critical loss of propellant”.
“The team is working to try and stabilise this loss, but given the situation, we have prioritised maximising the science and data we can capture,” the company said, adding that it was also “assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible”.
The Peregrine lander is equipped with engines and thrusters for manoeuvring, not only during the cruise to the Moon but for a descent to the lunar surface.
Soon after, NASA released a brief statement, saying: “Each mission is an opportunity to learn. We’re proud to work with our partners to advance exploration of the Moon.”
Mr Kearns added:
“We will use this lesson to propel our efforts to advance science, exploration, and commercial development of the Moon.”
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the fact that the Vulcan rocket was a success meant the US now had “more tools to explore space”.
Three hours later, Astrobotic said it had received its first image from Peregrine in space, which the company said showed a “propulsion system anomaly” had caused some of the spacecraft’s insulation to be disturbed.
“At this time, the majority of our Peregrine mission team has been awake and working diligently for more than 24 hours,” the company said.
NASA said it was working with Astrobotic to find the cause of the problem and evaluate what it means for the agency.
“Space is hard. We support our vendors and look forward to learning all we can,” it said in a statement.
In its sixth update another five hours later, Astrobotic said the fuel leak was ongoing, but the company estimated Peregrine’s thrusters could continue to work for another 40 hours.
“At this time, the goal is to get Peregrine as close to lunar distance as we can before it loses the ability to maintain its sun-pointing position and subsequently loses power,” Astrobotic said.
Dr Flannery said it was likely that Peregrine would end up in lunar orbit, but be unable to communicate with Astrobotic.
“That’s a blow for them, but it launched successfully — so that’s progress,” he said. “NASA would be disappointed, but [it would] fully expect that we’ll see challenges like this.”
What is Peregrine carrying?
Peregrine is carrying science experiments, as well as a digital time capsule known as the Lunar Codex, which contains thousands of artworks, including some pieces by Australians.
Canada-based physicist Dr Samuel Peralta is the driving force behind the time capsule. He told ABC News that Peregrine’s engineers would need to decide between a hard landing or flying past the Moon to gather more data for future attempts.
“Peregrine can no longer make a soft landing. A hard landing means delicate NASA instruments will not survive,” he said.
Dr Peralta added that the box containing the Lunar Codex would likely survive a hard landing.
Peregrine is also carrying a piece of rock from Mount Everest, toy-size cars from Mexico which were set to cruise around on the lunar surface, as well as the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts like Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.
The cost of sending cargo on Peregrine reportedly ranged from a few hundred US dollars to $US1.2 million ($1.8 million) per kilogram.
NASA says the five “science investigations” Peregrine is carrying are:
- A Laser Retroreflector Array
- A Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System
- A Neutron Spectrometer System
- A Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer
- An Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer
What’s next for Peregrine and other Moon landers?
NASA says copies of four of the five experiments aboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander are expected to fly on future flights.
A second Moon lander from Houston company Intuitive Machines is due to launch on a SpaceX rocket in February, but the Reuters news agency reports that NASA is set to delay its next few missions to the lunar surface.
Name of Australia’s first Moon rover announced
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Astrobotic’s contract with NASA for the Peregrine lander was worth $US108 million ($161 million) and it has more work in the pipeline.
Dr Flannery said he wasn’t surprised to see Astrobotic face challenges in getting to the Moon.
“These are really the first real commercial missions to the Moon,” he said.
“They’re done in a slightly different way to NASA missions: The budget is definitely tighter for one, and everyone has to learn how to do things, including all of the navigations and the systems that you need.”
America’s space agency wants privately owned landers to assess the Moon and deliver technology to its surface before astronauts are next sent into the lunar atmosphere.
NASA’s Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — plans to return astronauts to the Moon’s surface within the next few years. First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly before the end of 2024.
Two Australian consortiums are also working on Moon landers, and one is expected to be sent to the lunar surface as early as 2026, under the name Roo-ver.
How have other Moon missions gone?
Moon landings have been both hits and misses.
The last time the US launched a Moon landing mission was in December 1972, before Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the Moon.
The Soviet Union and the US racked up a string of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting touchdowns on pause.
China joined the elite club in 2013, before an Israeli nonprofit crashed in 2019.
India landed on the Moon in 2023 — a year which also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the lunar surface.
