Astrobotic’s Peregrine moon mission for NASA falls short

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s inaugural lunar mission suffered a malfunction shortly after launch, and the company is calling off the landing attempt.

It would have been the first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years.

Astrobotic said late Monday that the goal for its Peregrine moon lander is now to get “as close to lunar distance as we can” before the spacecraft begins tumbling and loses power. The company suspects the malfunction was a failure within the spacecraft’s propulsion system, causing a leak that is quickly draining the vehicle of fuel.

The company had aimed to make a moon landing attempt on Feb. 23, but in light of the propulsion problem has since been “maximizing the science and data we can capture,” the company said in a post on social media platform X.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine is carrying 20 payloads for government and commercial customers, five of which are for NASA under a $108 million contract.

Peregrine was deployed successfully after launching on the inaugural flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket early Monday morning, which made its long-awaited debut from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Hours after separating from the rocket, Astrobotic announced it was receiving data from the lander and that many of its systems were working as expected. However, after activating its propulsion system, Peregrine suffered an issue and began tumbling.

Astrobotic spent the following hours improvising and was able to get the spacecraft’s solar arrays pointing toward the sun to charge Peregrine’s battery….