🌔 Neues vom #Mondrausch: Der Jänner 2024 ist das Monat des Versagens.
Nachdem #Peregrine in der Erdatmosphäre verglüht ist, der geplante #NASA Flug von #Artemis2 um ein Jahr verschoben wurde, steht nun auch der japanische Lander #Slim Kopf. Falsch am Mond gelandet und kein bisschen Energie mehr. Ein Käfer auf dem Rücken.
Auch vom Mars gibt es keine Erfolge zu berichten: der Helikopter #Ingenuity fliegt nicht mehr. All das Scheitern zeigt, wie verletzlich der Mensch im Weltraum ist.
🌑 En accord avec les prédictions, la rentrée atmosphérique de #Peregrine semble bien avoir eu lieu hier soir à 20h59 UTC comme le montre le profil Doppler via l'antenne australienne du Deep Space Network : la vitesse augmente rapidement jusqu'à la perte du signal.
Via Richard Stephenson
🛰️🌑 Astrobotic indique dans son dernier communiqué que la trajectoire de #Peregrine se dirige maintenant vers la Terre et qu'il « va probablement brûler dans l’atmosphère terrestre ». Pas de chronologie détaillée pour le moment.
Tony Dunn, spécialiste des simulations d'orbites, a estimé la rentrée au-dessus du nord de l'Australie le 18 janvier en fin de journée (UTC)
Why landing on the moon is proving more difficult today than 50 years ago
Those of you old enough may rememberl the fuss about companies charging NASA exorbitant prices for things like nuts and bolts, in the region of thousands of dollars, because of NASA high specifications. Maybe these private companies going into space are buying stuff off the shelf, and cheaply, in order to make the profit demanded by the share-holders.
" ..operational in space for more than 4 days. The spacecraft remains stable and operational, and is currently in a planned loss-of-signal period for about another hour and a half. The leak rate on Peregrine has continued to slow, and the spacecraft is estimated to now have 52 hours of propellant remaining."
The NASA/Astrobotic Peregrine lunar landing mission, launched today, is experiencing an anomaly 😢
A propulsion anomaly has resulted in improper pointing of the spacecraft resulting in drop in power from the solar panels. An improvised maneuver was made to reorient the solar panels. The spacecraft is currently out of range of the ground station, fingers are crossed to check the status when it comes back in comm. view again.
The thruster used on the Astrobotic Peregrine spacecraft uses a new technology not deployed in space before.
It uses monomethyl hydrazine (MMH) as the fuel and MON-25 as the oxidizer (a mixture of 75% nitrogen tetroxide, N2O4, and 25% nitric oxide, NO). They have a lower freezing point than other propellants.
The engine was developed by Frontier Aerospace as part of the NASA Thruster Advancement for Low-temperature Operation in Space (TALOS) program.
The MMH/MON-25 propellant used in Peregrine, can operate at temps. as low as of -40°F, while other thrusters of the same size need to be kept above 45°F.
That results in smaller, lighter and less expensive systems.
E.g., TALOS reduces the weight and power requirements of a spacecraft by reducing the need for heaters to keep the propellant from freezing. The TALOS thruster itself is also lighter than other engines of similar power.
I suppose Astrobotic really had no choice. NASA probably made it clear in no uncertain terms that a dead spacecraft in cislunar orbit is unacceptable, esp. one with NASA funding. #Peregrine
18/n
Less than 24 hours left before the crippled Peregrine mission ends with a planned fiery reentry into Earth's atmosphere.
Update 20 from Astrobotic indicates reentry around 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET) tomorrow Jan 18.
A series of small engine burns and attitude adjustments were made with the damaged and leaking propulsion system to aim the spacecraft for reentry over the Pacific Ocean, ~1,500 km north of New Zealand as shown in the map below.
As the Astrobotic Peregrine spacecraft races to meet its end with a fiery entry into Earth's atmosphere today around 4:00 p.m. ET, it took this beautiful melancholic picture of a crescent earth, its final destination.
Kudos to the Astrobotic team for keeping the spacecraft operational this long, in spite of the propulsion system failure, that initially sent the spacecraft tumbling out of control.
We learn from our failures, so we can succeed next time.
#Astrobotic#Peregrine update 17 While we believe it is possible for the #spacecraft to operate for several more weeks and could potentially have raised the orbit to miss the Earth, we must take into consideration the anomalous state of the propulsion system and utilize the vehicle’s onboard capability to end the mission responsibly and safely.
Peregrine will soon return and burn up 🔥 in Earth’s #atmosphere. https://www.astrobotic.com/update-17-for-peregrine-mission-one/
Peregrine remains operational at about 238,000 miles from Earth, which means that we have reached lunar distance! As we posted in Update #10, the Moon is not where the spacecraft is now (see graphic). Our original trajectory had us arriving at the Moon on day 15 post launch. Our propellant estimates currently have us running out of fuel before this 15-day mark — however, our engineers are still optimistic about extending Peregrine's life expectancy. On Thursday, January 18, 2024, at NOON ET, Astrobotic is hosting a teleconference with NASA for major mission updates and will be streamed on select NASA channels. With Peregrine operating in a stable configuration and a teleconference imminent, we will post an update tomorrow, but will be slowing down our update cadence for now. Thank you again for the words of support we've received for our team.