Peregrine Moon Lander Confirmed To Fail To Land On The Moon

Peregrine will fail to land on the Moon (photo: dock. Astrobotic)

JAKARTA Astrobotic, lander technology maker Peregrine, confirmed that their lander will not land on the Moon. Even though it will fail, Peregrine is still operating today.

After experiencing anomalies about seven hours after launch, Astrobotic said that their lander had another problem. This news was conveyed on Wednesday, January 10 at 00.17 WIB.

Although it did not explain the problem in detail, the company stated that Peregrine was still able to survive. Astrobotics have also addressed the problem of the lack of solar-powered batteries as Peregrine moves further away from the Sun.

Unfortunately, this new stable condition will not last long. The leaky propellant problem is still not resolved so that the Peregrine landing on the Moon will fail. The aircraft will lose fuel in a matter of hours.

We still have enough fuel to continue to operate the vehicle as a spacecraft. The team has updated its forecasts and currently we expect it to run out of propellants in about 40 hours from now," the Astrobotic team said.

Currently, the company is still trying to maintain and extend the operational life of the Peregrine lander. Even though the failure to land on the Moon is very clear, they still want to receive valuable data from Peregrine.

Meanwhile, Astrobotic makes hypotheses regarding the cause of the anomaly in the propulsion section. They believe that this anomaly occurs because the valves between helium pressure and the oxidator fail to be re-closed during the initialization process.

This causes a high pressure helium flow that increases the pressure in the oxidator tank to exceed its operating limits and then damages the tank, the Astrobotic team said. However, this hypothesis is still just a theory.

For further review, complete analysis results and data from the Peregrine lander will be submitted to the formal review board. All of these reports will be submitted once the mission is complete or after Peregrine is no longer operational.