For 32 hours, engineers from the private company Astrobotic have worked tirelessly to try to recover its Peregrine lunar module, successfully launched on Monday aboard the company’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. United Launch Alliance (ULA). But in the end it was not possible and they have just announced that the moon landing scheduled for next February 23rd will not be able to take place.
The Pilgrim It was set to become the first American module to reach the lunar surface in more than 50 years. and also in the first one developed by a private company that reached our satellite.
It was the first mission of the initiative called CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) within the framework of which NASA is working with several American companies, of different sizes, to bring science and technology to the surface mole. This initiative aims to pave the way for the Artemis missions that aim to send astronauts back to the lunar surface.
As planned, takeoff took place on Monday at 2:18 a.m. local time (8:18 a.m. Spanish peninsular time) from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in what represents the maiden flight of the Vulcan rocket, developed by this company in which Boeing and Lockheed Martin participate.
The launch went as planned and for seven hours, the mission that the US put into orbit loaded with scientific instruments to investigate our satellite was considered a success by NASA. But early Monday afternoon, the private company Astrobotic, which manufactured this module called Peregrine, reported an anomaly that prevented the ship from being able to orient itself correctly with respect to the sun, so it could not charge its panels and therefore obtain enough energy to function.