The Woodlands, Texas — Although it didn’t reach the moon, NASA and others flying the payload on Astrobotic’s lunar lander Peregrine say the mission still yielded useful data. There is.
Peregrine launched on January 8th on the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. However, the spacecraft suffered a propellant leak hours after liftoff, ending any chance of attempting a moon landing. Instead, the spacecraft re-entered a week and a half after liftoff.
Peregrine did not reach the moon, but many of its payloads were tested during the flight. “During transit, we intended to keep most of these payloads in survival mode,” Astrobotic Vice President Dan Hendrickson said about the mission at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference here. He spoke at a session on March 11th. “But as our mission deviated, so did our plan, which resulted in significant benefits for all payloads.”
Although many of Peregrine’s science payloads were unable to collect desired data from the moon’s surface, they were able to be tested in space and, in some cases, perform science.
These included the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) instrument, which collected data about the Moon’s radiation environment, rather than the intended lunar surface. “We had to change our operations to retrieve data during flight,” said Stuart George of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, one of the instrument’s leaders. “The equipment was working perfectly the entire time.”
Another NASA instrument, the Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), was also able to operate during the flight. Traces of nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide were detected, likely from the lander’s leaking oxidizer. “The temporary atmosphere of oxidants around the spacecraft, a self-induced environment, persisted,” said Barbara Cohen, PITMS principal investigator at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
One of the non-NASA payloads aboard Peregrine was the lunar rover Iris, built by Carnegie Mellon students. “Instead we became a ‘RoverSat,'” said Raewyn Duvall, Iris’ program manager. This included testing many of the rover’s subsystems and turning some of the wheels to make sure they worked. “Everything we were able to test worked.”
Astrobotic is currently working with Peregrine to determine the root cause of the propellant leak and the changes required to its Griffin large lander, which is being developed to launch NASA’s Volatile Materials Research Polar Rover (VIPER) mission. I’m considering a mission. After the presentation, Hendrickson said the investigation is progressing well, but did not provide a timeline for completion.
Joel Kearns, deputy assistant administrator for Exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a March 11 NASA Town Hall meeting that NASA is closely monitoring the investigation. Looking to the future,” he said, including specific changes to VIPER. “We will consider the findings of the Disability Review Board and decide what action needs to be taken against VIPER.”
Griffin and VIPER were scheduled to launch as early as November of this year, but Kearns, speaking at a meeting of the Planetary Science Advisory Committee on March 5, said the launches would likely be delayed. “It is extremely unlikely that we will fly before the end of this year,” as Peregrine’s research is being done as well as other work to prepare the rover and lander for launch, he said. He said NASA will wait to set a new date until the Peregrine study is complete.
