Peregrine

The crippled Peregrine Moon Lander is heading back toward Earth, and is expected to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere on January 18, 2024. This is the conclusion of the latest tracking data from Astrobotic’s Mission Control Center.Now 242,000 miles (289,000 km) from Earth, Peregrine Mission 1 continues to be one of the most successful failures in space exploration. The lift off that was also the maiden flight of a new class of heavy rocket went off flawlessly, the onboard systems and the raft of experiments are powered up…

It looks like the Peregrine lunar lander’s final resting place will be back at home where it started. The doomed spacecraft, which experienced an anomaly shortly after launch and has been leaking propellant ever since, is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, Astrobotic wrote in an update on X this weekend. The company plans to host a press conference with NASA on Thursday January 18 at 12PM ET to discuss the lander’s fate.Peregrine has so far hung on much longer than anyone thought it would after the leak was first…

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Tragically, Astrobotic’s lander will not be able to pull off a soft landing on the lunar surface. However, Peregrine continues on its trajectory to the Moon, and as a small consolation, its onboard payloads have successfully powered on.China's Plan to Land Astronauts on the MoonIn a series of updates shared on X, Astrobotic announced that it successfully powered up 10 payloads on board Peregrine and received data from all nine payloads designed to communicate with the lander.The instruments that have turned on so far…

Astrobotic’s ill-fated Peregrine moon lander may soon be tumbling through space, but in the meantime, it’s collecting data for science. In an update on Thursday, NASA disclosed that payloads aboard the lander successfully collecting data. Astrobotic shared a similar update on X (formerly Twitter) earlier in the day.NASA says the plan is to extend Peregrine’s mission for as long as possible in order to continue data collection efforts. “Measurements and operations of the NASA-provided science instruments on board will…

The Peregrine lander has less than a day to live, and the company behind the spacecraft may have figured out why its mission was doomed shortly after its launch. China's Plan to Land Astronauts on the MoonAstrobotic is blaming a faulty valve for Peregrine’s critical fuel loss, which made its soft landing on the Moon unachievable, the Pittsburgh-based company shared in its most recent update on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. The 2,829-pound (1,283-kilogram) Peregrine lander launched on Monday on board United Launch…

The launch of the new U.S. Moon lander went off without a hitch early Monday morning, with the brand-new Vulcan rocket lifting off flawlessly. However, the Peregrine lander that it carried into orbit has begun to experience problems, and now Astrobotic is in a race to sort the issues and get things back on track.The launch of the Peregrine lander is momentous for quite a few reasons, chief among them the fact that it will be the first U.S. lander to touch down on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended…

Early Monday morning, after an iconic launch aboard a Vulcan Centaur, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander suffered from some problems. Now, it seems those problems will win out, as the company has shared news that Peregrine likely won’t make it to the Moon due to a fuel leak.The team shared an update yesterday around three in the afternoon, stating that the camera aboard Peregrine had captured images of the damaged spacecraft. This damage appears to have caused some issues with the propulsion system, which has caused…

An historic commercial US mission to the Moon will fail after suffering a critical loss of fuel, organizers admitted Tuesday, ending for the time being America's hopes of placing its first spacecraft on the lunar surface since the Apollo era.Fixed to the top of United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander blasted off Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then successfully separated from its launch vehicle.But a few hours later, Astrobotic began reporting…

Astrobotic, the team behind the Peregrine spacecraft, is urgently working to extract any possible value from its failing mission. This comes after a catastrophic propellant leak occurred just after yesterday’s launch, ending the spacecraft’s attempt to land on the Moon.China's Plan to Land Astronauts on the MoonThe 2,829-pound (1,283-kilogram) Peregrine lander reached space early yesterday, after the picturesque inaugural launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. Following orbital insertion, Astrobotic,…