On Jan. 8, 2024, at 2:18 a.m., Pittsburgh-based aerospace company, Astrobotic, proudly sent its first lunar lander, Peregrine Mission One, towards the moon.
It was a historic picture-perfect launch atop the inaugural Vulcan Centaur rocket. After separation with the rocket, the fully operational spacecraft went through its final stages of initialization, then suffered an anomaly. A catastrophic loss of propellant meant a soft lunar landing could no longer be possible.
An ingenious acrobatic maneuver from mission control, which is located here in Pittsburgh, turned the craft’s solar panels toward the sun, restoring fading battery life. Peregrine remained alive. The payloads aboard received power and collected data for NASA and other companies.
NASA gathered radiation environment information, invaluable for the safety of future human moon-bound missions, and also concluded that their payloads could have successfully operated on the Moon’s surface. Mexico celebrated their first experiments in space. Peregrine continued a planned course to lunar distance, 240,000 miles from Earth, before heading home.
A planned re-entry insured Peregrine would burn up over a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean on its way through Earth’s atmosphere. Mission conclusion was Jan. 18, 2024.
Only 50% of lunar landings have succeeded so far. But the challenges and risks of exploration have been embraced by NASA’s lower cost CLIPS missions, and Pittsburgh’s next lunar lander, Griffin, is currently under construction at Astrobotic.
First Published: March 12, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
