Despite a fuel leak that took a moon landing off the board for commercial company Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lunar lander, teams have continued to stretch the spacecraft’s life and do what they can to salvage the mission.
That includes successful power and communication to its payloads from Astrobotic’s Mission Control Center.
“We have successfully received data from all nine payloads designed to communicate with the lander. All 10 payloads requiring power have received it, while the remaining 10 payloads aboard the spacecraft are passive,” the company stated.
The lander, which is now considered a spacecraft by the company, launched atop United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan Centaur from Cape Canaveral early Monday, but after successfully separating from the Centaur second stage and establishing communications and power, the moon mission was dealt a blow when team members found it could not maintain its sun-facing position so its solar arrays could generate power.
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By using fuel from its Attitude Control System thrusters, teams have been able to keep it from an uncontrolled tumble and maintain a charge to its batteries. By Tuesday after troubleshooting, Astrobotic confirmed the source of the “anomaly” was some sort of propellant leak.
The company said it expected to run out of its ability to keep the spacecraft stable toward the sun, and subsequently lose power after only 40 hours from launch, which would have meant it going dark sometime on Wednesday, but adjustments have allowed for incremental extensions to the spacecraft’s lifespan.
Update #10 for Peregrine Mission One: pic.twitter.com/lpLd6KF24Y
— Astrobotic (@astrobotic) January 10, 2024
By 7 p.m. Wednesday, Peregrine had traveled about 200,000 miles from Earth.
“Although we are approaching lunar distance, the moon won’t be there,” the company explained in a post detailing the path of the spacecraft. “We remain on our nominal trajectory for the mission, which includes a phasing loop around Earth. This loop goes out to lunar distance, swings back around the Earth, and then cruises out to me the moon. The trajectory reaches the moon in about 15 days post-launch.”
It had headed into a planned nine-hour blackout, but Astrobotic confirmed communications were back around 4 a.m. Thursday. Astrobotic said on Wednesday evening it expected it had 36 hours or propellant remaining still, which would allow it to remain a functional spacecraft into Friday.
“The team is working around the clock to generate options to extend the spacecraft’s life,” the company posted on Wednesday.
The company has not said to what degree the lander would be able to remain on its planned trajectory after it loses power or there was any chance it could still interact with the moon. Original plans were for it to enter a high lunar orbit at first, then descend with the help of thrusters for a landing on Feb. 23.
As far as the power and communication successes for its payloads go, Astrobotic said that included items on board from NASA under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract, the reason the lander was flying in the first place.
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NASA paid Astrobotic $108 million, with which the company had to develop the lander, procure a flight to space and be in charge of communication during the mission. It’s one of nine CLPS contracts already awarded among four of 14 potential companies with as many as four more CLPS missions slated to fly in 2024, including a second Astrobotic flight with larger lander called Griffin.
“These payloads have now been able to prove operational capability in space and are analyzing the impact of this development now,” the company posted at 10 a.m. Thursday. “We are proud of the mission team for achieving this incredible feat under such challenging circumstances.”
Power and communication was established for NASA’s Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer, Neutron Spectrometer System and Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer and Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System. A fifth NASA CLPS payload is simply a set of mirrors attached to the spacecraft called the Laser Retroreflector Array not requiring power or communication. NASA estimated the value of its five CLPS payloads on board at $5 million.
Among the 15 other payloads on board, Astrobotic was able to get power and data from the COLMENA from LINX-UNAM payload, which featured five small rovers from the Mexican space agency; the M-42 Radiation Detector from the German Aerospace Center; a NASA-provided but non-CLPS payload Navigation Doppler Lidar subsystem; Astrobotic’s own Optical Precision Autonomous Landing system and the Iris Lunar Rover from Carnegie Mellon University, the wheels of which could be seen in the latest image from space provided by the company.
Power only was also established to commercial Japanese beverage company Pocari Sweat’s Lunar Dream Time Capsule, but communication was not needed. Neither power nor communication was needed for the 10 other payloads, such as the two sets of human remains from a pair of commercial companies that were supposed to become a lunar memorial.
The company expects to discuss the mission in an upcoming teleconference, the details of which have yet to be announced.
While Astrobotic’s soft moon landing goals will have to wait until at least its Griffin mission, Houston-based company Intuitive Machines is set up to launch in February from Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 aiming for a chance to land as early as Feb. 22 with its Nova-C lander.
