On January 9, Astrobotic Technology (headquartered in Pennsylvania), the company developing the first American lunar lander in more than 5 decades, was forced to abandon its attempt to land the Peregrine spacecraft on the moon within the first 24 hours of leaving the launch pad in Florida (USA) on January 8. According to Reuters , the cause was a fuel leak, causing a serious loss of thrust.
The Peregrine spacecraft successfully separated from the United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket overnight from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and quickly established contact with NASA's ground-based radio antenna network, Astrobotic Technology announced on January 8.
All of the spacecraft's systems were functioning as expected and the spacecraft "moved to full operational status." However, "unfortunately, an anomaly occurred that prevented the spacecraft from achieving a stable orientation toward the Sun."
Accordingly, the lander was unable to position itself facing the sun due to a problem with the thruster, resulting in the ship being unable to charge its batteries. The battery problem was later resolved, but until now Astrobotic has been helpless due to problems related to the ship's propulsion system.
The first images from the Peregrine mission showed the spacecraft’s outer insulation crumpling, evidence of an anomaly in the propulsion system. On January 9, Astrobotic updated its information, saying that the fuel leak was forcing the propulsion system, which controls the spacecraft’s navigation system, to operate more than expected to prevent Peregrine from going into a state of chaos. The propulsion system had a maximum of 40 hours of operation from the time of notification.
"As of now, our goal is to get Peregrine as close to the moon as possible before losing its ability to maintain its sun-facing position and running out of power," CNN quoted the company as saying. That also meant Astrobotic had to cancel its goal of landing the spacecraft on the moon's surface, which was supposed to happen on February 23.
So far, only a handful of countries have managed to land softly on Earth’s nearest neighbor. The United States and others are increasingly turning to the commercial sector to carry out routine missions and deliver hardware at lower costs.
Astrobotic built Peregrine under a $108 million contract with NASA. The spacecraft was designed to be low-cost, serving NASA’s vision of reducing the cost of launching lunar lander by collaborating with private companies.
Minh Hoa (reported by Thanh Nien, VNA)
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