WASHINGTON — With the Peregrine lunar lander mission now complete, Astrobotic is turning its attention to understanding what went wrong with the spacecraft and incorporating any changes into a much larger lander for NASA.
U.S. Space Command confirmed Jan. 19 that Peregrine reentered the previous day, but did not provide a specific time or reentry location. Astrobotic had targeted a reentry in the South Pacific at around 4 p.m. Eastern Jan. 18.
In a call with reporters, John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, said the company lost telemetry from the spacecraft at 3:50 p.m. Eastern and lost ranging with the spacecraft nine minutes later, “which aligns with our projected reentry at 4:04 p.m. Eastern.” At the time of the call, he said he was still waiting for confirmation of that reentry from U.S. government agencies, which came later in the call in the form of the Space Command statement.
The reentry ended Peregrine’s mission, which started more than 10 days earlier with a successful launch on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur. The spacecraft, though, suffered a propellant leak hours after liftoff that prevented the spacecraft from attempting a landing on the moon. The company elected to have the spacecraft reenter when it swung by Earth in its highly elliptical orbit rather than attempt a maneuver that could have sent it to the moon as originally planned.
Allowing Peregrine to reenter was a “difficult decision,” Thornton said. “The thing we were weighing was, should we send this back to Earth or should we take the risk to operate it in cislunar space?” Operating it longer could have involved having the spacecraft fly by or impact the moon, or possibly go into orbit around it, depending on the health of its propulsion system and remaining propellant.
Space safety led them to choose an Earth impact. “It’s important that we all act as responsible parties and make sure that we are keeping space available and…
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