Astrobotic remains optimistic about the Peregrine lunar lander despite the failure of the probe’s first mission.
Peregine was launched on January 8 with the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket. While the launch was proceeding smoothly, Peregrine experienced a propellant anomaly that caused a significant propellant leak just a few hours into its mission. It soon became clear that Peregrine would not reach the moon and would fall back to Earth, and the lander eventually re-entered the atmosphere and broke up over the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, January 18. Astrobotic kept the public informed throughout the mission, posting updates several times a day on how the crippled Peregrine lander was progressing.
Despite the early completion of the mission, Astrobotic CEO John Thornton is proud of Peregrine’s performance. “I know it’s very easy to focus on the failure and the one thing that failed in the spacecraft, and we’re all going to have dreams about that for a long time,” Thornton said during a media teleconference on Friday (January 1). 19).
“But there are a lot of things that work,” Thornton continued. “And that’s something I’m very proud of. Astrobotic designs and manufactures hardware like avionics, software, system architectures and other parts of the spacecraft; it all works.”
Relating to: Astrobotics loses contact with limping Peregrine lunar lander
Thornton detailed the anomaly that sealed Peregrine’s fate, explaining how a valve separating helium and oxidizer in the lander’s propulsion system was not properly resealed. This problem caused a rush of helium to enter the oxidizer tank and the pressure to rise to the point that the tank ruptured.
Thornton said emotions at mission control immediately sank when the Astrobotics team realized what had happened. Still, the anomaly led Astrobotic’s flight engineers to moments of incredible creativity as they improvised maneuvers to point the spacecraft’s solar panels toward the sun and even managed to snap a picture of Earth.
To take the photo, Thornton explained, Astrobotics mission controllers had to rotate the spacecraft so that a pylon blocked the sun from the camera lens, likening it to blocking the sun out of view with one finger.
“It was a very emotional moment,” Thornton said. “Because I think it represents the best of Astrobotics.”
Thornton added that mission controllers were also able to use the doomed lander’s propellant leak to help them adjust the ship for safe reentry into the Pacific. “And the last maneuver was very clever, because at that point they had identified the leak, and they realized that if we could turn the spacecraft around, we could actually use the leak to our advantage as a continuous, small propulsive maneuver that could push us a little further out into the ocean.”
The decision to place Peregrine on a route to re-enter the ocean was not taken lightly. Thornton said the company considered the benefits of trying to stay on the landing path, but ultimately it was too risky and had the potential to create dangerous space debris.
“Theoretically, we could maybe go around the Earth and potentially go back to the Moon. At that point, it was anyone’s guess as to what might happen next,” Thornton said during the teleconference. “Maybe we could have made an impact. Maybe we could have missed the Moon. Maybe we could have had enough fuel to get into lunar orbit.
“This is really a hypothetical world. At this point, we don’t really know what’s going to happen next.”
Some of Peregrine’s payloads also performed admirably, although they failed to reach their final destination. A radiation detector built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) was able to collect 92 hours of data on the radiation environment in cislunar space, and two instruments built by NASA, the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS) and the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), likewise They were able to take measurements of this radiation during Peregrine’s flight.
However, many of the cargoes on board, such as multiple lunar rovers or controversial monument cargoes containing human remains, failed to fulfill their intended uses at all. Dan Hendrickson, Astrobotic’s vice president of business development, thanked the payload teams for their support during the mission, emphasizing that customers “know all the challenges and risks of the lunar mission and how difficult it really is to put a spacecraft on the moon.” .
“They clearly understood that when they came to the table, but we didn’t take any chances. And we outlined and explained all of those challenges and risks,” Hendrickson said. “And to their credit, they still signed up.”
Peregrine was the first mission contracted by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS), which aims to accelerate lunar science by partnering with private companies such as Astrobotic to conduct scientific experiments on the Moon.
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Joel Kearns, deputy administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, added that “failure is often part of the path to success” and that despite Peregrine’s fate, the agency is still committed to CLPS. “We adopt a risk stance” [in which] New companies will innovate, push boundaries, and we will all learn and grow from every flight,” Kearns said during today’s briefing.
The next mission contracted under CLPS will begin soon: The Nova-C lander, built by Houston company Intuitive Machines, is scheduled to launch toward the moon atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in mid-February.