The American company that launched a mission on Monday to try to soft-land on the Moon says it may not be able to control its spacecraft for much longer.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic is fighting a fuel leak from its Peregrine lander, which is making it hard to maintain stable pointing of the spacecraft.
Mission life could now be measured in just hours, the firm said.
Certainly, a touch-down on the lunar surface – the first for the US in half a century – is no longer possible.
“At this time the goal is to get Peregrine as close to lunar distance as we can before it loses the ability to maintain its Sun-pointing position and subsequently loses power,” a statement from Astrobotic read.
The 1.2-tonne lander was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the intention of landing on the Moon’s northern hemisphere in late February.
The US space agency (Nasa) had purchased capacity on the lander for five instruments to study the lunar surface environment ahead of sending astronauts there later this decade.
Peregrine ran into trouble almost as soon as it came off the top of its launch rocket.
Engineers noticed the would-be Moon lander was struggling to keep its solar panels looking in the direction of the Sun to charge its battery.
The cause was quickly attributed to a major leak in the propulsion system that was pushing Peregrine out of alignment.
To maintain the correct orientation in flight, Peregrine’s thrusters are now having to work overtime, consuming even more of the diminishing fuel supply.
Astrobotic calculates the craft has about a day’s worth of propellant left before reserves are exhausted and the spacecraft starts tumbling.
When that moment arrives, Peregrine, with its solar panels no longer collecting sunlight, will rapidly lose power.
Astrobotic is the first of three US companies to send a lander to the Moon this year under a new private-public partnership with Nasa.
The agency is buying transport services from the Pittsburgh firm and two other commercial ventures – Intuitive Machines and Firefly. Together, the trio had planned six missions to the lunar surface in 2024.
All three US companies have Nasa as a “customer”, but the agency is “not in charge” of their projects. It is the firms themselves who have designed the spacecraft and are in command as the missions progress.
BBC
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