The saga of Peregrine is coming to a tragic end, with the lunar lander scheduled for reentry through Earth’s atmosphere after failing to touch down on the Moon.
We’re still reeling from last week’s Astrobotic failure, in which a catastrophic propellant leak rendered the Peregrine lunar lander incapable of completing its Moon landing mission.
The Peregrine lunar lander is coming back home to die. Astrobotic’s shiny gold spacecraft is on a trajectory towards Earth, where it is expected to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere to conclude its tragic demise.
Failure in space dominated our headlines this week, with Astrobotic’s uncrewed lunar lander mission Peregrine-1 experiencing critical issues shortly after leaving Earth. Back on the ground, though, NASA finally—after months of trying—succeeded in opening the container filled with samples plucked from the asteroid…
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.
For millennia, our species looked at the Moon as a place that would forever be beyond our reach, but 20th-century technologies finally made our natural satellite accessible to probes, landers, and even human explorers. Despite these achievements, however, the Moon has furiously resisted our overtures, whether it be…
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.
NASA is dealing with a host of safety and technical issues related to the spacecraft that will fly astronauts to the Moon, forcing it to postpone two Artemis missions as it tries to resolve a number of logistical challenges.