The “Peregrine” lunar landing module from a failed U.S. private mission is currently heading back toward Earth and will likely burn up in the atmosphere. The capsule was actually supposed to land on the moon on February 23.
“Our latest assessment now shows that the spacecraft is on a path towards Earth, where it will likely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere,” operating company Astrobotic said on Saturday in the short message service X (formerly Twitter, see message below).
The landing module started losing fuel
“As a reminder, a soft landing on the moon is not possible,” the Pittsburgh-based company added. ‘Peregrine’ was launched last Monday on a rocket from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida. After separation from the rocket, an explosion occurred and the moon capsule began to leak fuel.
It soon became clear that a soft moon landing would not be a success. However, experts speculated that Astrobotic might consider an emergency landing on the moon. Despite the loss of fuel, scientific experiments were carried out on board the ‘Peregrine’, including for the American space agency NASA, and flight data was collected.
The capsule would orbit the moon for weeks
The original plan was for ‘Peregrine’ to orbit the celestial body for several weeks after arriving near the moon and then land on it on February 23. Astrobotic wanted to become the first private company to successfully land on Earth’s satellite. NASA paid the company more than 100 million dollars (about 91 million euros) for it.
Landing on the moon is an enormous challenge; about half of the attempts fail. So far, only the US, the Soviet Union, China and India have managed to land on Earth’s satellite.
Source: Krone
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