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.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home