The Peregrine lunar module, which is scheduled to arrive on the Moon as part of a commercial mission financed by NASA, faced problems shortly after launch and may not be able to land at its destination, according to information published this Monday (8) by the American newspaper The New York Times.
The module, which took off this Monday, was developed by the private company Astrobotic Technology and sent to the Moon using the Vulcan Centaur rocket, from the company United Launch Alliance (ULA).
According to the American newspaper, a failure in the propulsion system of the Peregrine lunar module exhausted its fuel and compromised its trajectory to the Moon. The company responsible for the probe, Astrobotic Technology, said that it is working to try to save the mission, but that it “prioritizes the collection of scientific data”.
“We are currently evaluating which alternative mission profiles may be viable at this time,” the company said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).
The sending of the Peregrine module was the first of the missions in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which aims to reduce the cost of sending objects and experiments to the lunar surface.
These experiments are part of NASA's preparations to send astronauts back to the Moon under the Artemis program.
According to the Teams, NASA acknowledged that this type of mission involves “greater” risks and that it expects some of them to fail. The newspaper states that the eventual failure of this mission raises doubts about NASA's approach to using small private companies to send scientific experiments to the Moon. Such research is important for the agency's plans to send its astronauts to the natural satellite again.
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