US mission to the moon fails due to fuel leak

For a while it seemed like a success for American space travel. The launch of the new American Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle on Monday morning at 8:18 am (Dutch time) went without any problems during the first launch attempt.

But in the hours that followed, things still went wrong. The cargo, lunar lander Peregrine (‘peregrine falcon’), built by the company Astrobotic, has had an “anomaly”, the company reported a few hours after the launch. The lander has lost propellant, a variant of hydrazine, probably due to a leak. A moon landing, which requires Peregrine to slow down against the moon’s gravity, is therefore ruled out. Due to the problem, the solar panels can only remain pointed at the sun for a few dozen hours, an Astrobotic spokesperson said on Monday. Then it’s over.

Peregrine was supposed to land on the moon on February 23. “We are investigating which mission profiles are still feasible,” Astrobotic reported. A more precise cause for the failure will probably emerge from later research.

First commercial lunar lander

Peregrine was supposed to be the first American moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the first by a commercial lunar lander. American Astrobotic is a private company and participates in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, through which the space agency aims to boost the development of commercial spaceflight.

Similar programs have greatly aided the growth of private space companies such as SpaceX, making access to the International Space Station, for example, cheaper. NASA accepts the risk of failure according to its ‘shots on target’ philosophy: not all shots can be successful. So this shot was wrong.

The agency paid, among other things, $108 million to deliver five payloads, such as spectrometers and a laser reflector that should have reflected light from the moon. Also traveling with him was a moon cart weighing two kilograms, a German radiation meter and five small Mexican robots that were supposed to be catapulted onto the moon.

Moon landings remain difficult: the distances are great and the maneuvers complicated

The other paying passengers were mainly projects with a high PR stunt content: a plaque, a time capsule, a mini moon museum, two different bitcoins, photos of paying customers and cremation ashes, something that led to protests. A spokesperson for the American Navajo community protested this “desecration” of a celestial body venerated by the Navajo.

It will not happen this time: while launching to a low Earth orbit has become routine, moon landings remain difficult. The distances are much greater, and complicated orbital maneuvers are required to enter orbit around the moon and then to land in a controlled manner.

Rock samples

This summer, the Indian lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 succeeded, and earlier this century China succeeded with three Chang’e lunar landers. Chang’e 5 even returned rock samples to Earth in 2020.

But there are just as many failures: in 2019, the Israeli lunar lander Beresheet and the Indian Chandrayaan-2 crashed on the moon. Last summer, Japan’s Hakuto-R and Russia’s Luna 25 mission met an unfortunate end among the lunar craters. The Japanese lunar lander SLIM, launched in September 2023, will attempt a landing on January 19.

The renewed interest in our neighboring celestial body has everything to do with the discovery of water reserves on the moon, useful for producing hydrogen, oxygen and water, and thus supplying a lunar base. Russia, India, China and the US have now announced human lunar voyages, the latter in collaboration with Europe, Canada and Japan in the Artemis program. In 2022, the first Artemis mission flew an (unmanned) orbit around the moon. A first manned flight is planned for later this year.

Peregrine’s failure overshadows the otherwise successful debut flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket, built by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of US defense and aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Vulcan replaces the old Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, both advanced developments of nuclear rockets from the 1950s.

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