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The failure to land on the moon did not dampen Peregrine’s enthusiasm. This landing robot from the space company Astrobotic takes advantage of this by sending impressive selfie photos into space.
The photo posted by Astrobotic on
“Pocari is the first payload signed to Astrobotic and contains messages from children around the world,” an Astrobotic representative wrote in an X/Twitter post.
But there’s something else in the photo, as the post states: “Is that in the top right corner, is that the lens flare?”
In an X/Twitter post on Wednesday evening (October 1), the company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, confirmed that the visible piece was actually Earth.
FYI: Peregrine was launched on Monday (8/1) on the first flight of the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket.
The launch went well, but then the lander began leaking fuel from the tip of the rocket. Astrobotic suspects the leak was caused by a stuck valve that caused the oxidizer tank to rupture. The first selfie photo Peregrine sent to Earth helped the mission team trace the plane’s problems to its propulsion system.
This leak prevented Peregrine from landing on the Moon as planned. Originally, Peregrine would have become history if it had landed successfully on February 23rd. Until now, no private space probe had ever landed smoothly on the moon.
The lander is currently still on its way to the area around the moon. In an update posted on X/Twitter, Astrobotic said Peregrine is currently about 310,000 kilometers from Earth, about 80% of the way to the moon.
Peregrine only had fuel left to survive for 35 hours. The lander carries 20 payloads for various customers, including NASA, which deploys five scientific instruments as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
The Peregine mission was the first CLPS mission to be launched. The second will come next month, if all goes according to plan, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches Houston company Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander toward the moon.
Watch the video “The Peregrine lunar lander successfully launches on the Vulcan rocket.”
(rns/rns)
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