After the “Peregrine” capsule missed the goal of a first commercial landing on the moon, the operating company Astrobotic lost contact with it, as expected.
This indicates that the capsule crashed as planned around 10 p.m. CET on Thursday over the South Pacific and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, the Pittsburgh-based company said on the X platform, formerly Twitter. However, there is still no independent confirmation of this. Astrobotic and the US space agency NASA have announced a press conference at 7 p.m. (CET) today.
Drive system malfunction
The private mission launched a week ago from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida. However, problems arose shortly after take-off: due to a fault in the propulsion system, there was, among other things, a fuel leak. The engineers temporarily managed to stabilize the capsule, but the goal of a moon landing had to be abandoned.
The capsule was supposed to land in February in an area called Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Stickiness), completing the first – unmanned – US moon landing since the Apollo mission over 50 years ago.
“Peregrine” (in German: peregrine falcon) initially flew further and even reached the distance that the moon is from the Earth. After consultation with the US space agency Nasa, among others, it was then decided to allow the capsule to crash in a controlled manner, Astrobotic announced a few days ago.
