Jan. 8 (UPI) — Astrobotic on Monday said its Peregrine lunar lander, experienced an issue after successfully launching from Florida early in the morning.
In an update on X, Astrobotic said the “anomaly” prevented the craft from finding a “stable sun-pointing orientation.”
“The team is responding in real-time as the situation unfolds and will be providing updates as data is obtained and analyzed,” the company said.
It later said the cause of the unstable sun-pointing was likely “a propulsion anomaly.”
“If proven true, threatens the ability of the spacecraft to land on the moon,” Astrobotic said. “As the team fights to troubleshoot the issue, the spacecraft battery is reaching operationally low levels. Just before entering a known period of communication outage, the team developed an executed an improvised maneuver to reorient their solar panels toward the Sun. Shortly after this maneuver, the spacecraft entered an expected period of communication loss. We will provide more updates as Peregrine comes in view of the ground station again.”
Earlier, Astrobotic said after a successful separation from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, “Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander began receiving telemetry via the NASA Deep Space Network. Astrobotic-built avianics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit, as well as the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, all powered on and performed as expected,” before the anomaly occurred.
United Launch Alliance launched its first-ever Vulcan Centaur rocket at 2:18 a.m. EST within the 45-minute launch window from Florida’s famous Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with the aim of returning the United States to the moon for the first time in five decades.
Aboard for the inaugural flight was the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission One lunar lander, which separated from the rocket a little after 50 minutes into the flight for its final destination of the moon.
It was expected to make an attempt to land on the moon Feb. 23, and when it touched down on the Earth’s orbital, would be the first U.S. lunar landing since the final 1972 flight of the Apollo program.
“This mission really marks the beginning of a historic time,” Alivia Chapla, director of marketing and communications at Astrobotic, said during the launch’s live broadcast.
The lunar lander was meant to bring 20 payloads with it to the moon’s surface, including five for NASA. Another five were originally planned but were reallocated for future missions, according to the U.S. federal agency.
Among NASA’s scientific payloads is the Laser Retro-Reflector Array, the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer and the Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System.
Six nations have payloads on the Peregrine commercial lunar lander, Astrobotic said. The lunar was also transporting human remains and the DNA of 66 people. According to NASA, the lander has a nearly 200-pound payload capacity.
The launch was also the first of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative, known as CLPS, which has the federal space agency contracting U.S. companies to deliver science and technology to the moon.
NASA said the companies permit it to conduct further exploration of the moon as it prepares to send the first woman and first person of color to its surface under its Artemis program.
“We wanted to tap into the new ideas, the entrepreneurial spirit and all the engineering innovation that these small companies and startup companies bring in the United States,” Joel Kearns, associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during the live broadcast.
