America's plan to send its first lander to the Moon since 1972 has ended prematurely after the private owner and operator of the robotic Peregrine spacecraft announced that a massive propellant leak has made a lunar landing impossible.
There was an air of optimism as Peregrine Mission 1 (PM1) lifted off yesterday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida atop a Vulcan/Centaur rocket at 2:18 am EST. Everything from ignition of the Blue-Origin-built main engines to final payload separation went as planned and it looked as if a February landing in the Oceanus Procellarum region on the Moon was a safe bet.
Then came the bad news. After telemetry was established with Peregrine, Mission Control found that the craft couldn't keep its solar panel properly aimed at the Sun to charge the onboard battery. Engineers soon identified the fault as the spacecraft losing propellant at an alarming rate, causing it to fail to maintain the proper attitude in relation to the Sun.
Engineers managed to upload an algorithm to compensate and provide Peregrine with power, but they couldn't stop the fuel leak. Thirty-six hours into the flight, the company said that, though the leak had slowed, propellant was still being lost and would only last for another 40 hours.
The current theory about what caused the leak is that there was a failure some time after launch in a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer, which failed to seal. This caused the oxidizer tank to over-pressurize and burst.
As a result, the scheduled landing has been cancelled. What happens next is unclear. The otherwise intact probe continues to operate normally and the onboard experiments are sending back data. Peregrine might be able to continue as an orbital mission, but for how long is hard to say because once its tanks are exhausted Mission Control will no longer be able to control its trajectory or even its attitude.
In the end, it could be left tumbling helplessly in space until its batteries cease to charge and its systems fail.
According to Astrobotic, Peregrine is currently in translunar orbit and is otherwise operating normally.
Source: Astrobotic
