Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander suffers major failure
According to updates by the engineering team running Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, launched early today by ULA’s Vulcan rocket, the lander’s propulsion system suffered a major failure shortly after activation.
After successfully separating from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander began receiving telemetry via the NASA Deep Space Network. Astrobotic-built avionics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit, as well as the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, all powered on and performed as expected. After successful propulsion systems activation, Peregrine entered a safe operational state. Unfortunately, an anomaly then occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation.
The company later released an update, stating that the failure caused “a critical loss of propellant” that will make the mission impossible as planned. They are reassessing to see if they can come up with an alternate plan, but without sufficient fuel no lunar landing will be possible under any mission profile.
Peregrine is a smaller test version of Astrobotic’s larger Griffin lunar lander, which has contracts with NASA and ESA for later missions. This failure will likely impact those missions, forcing either delays or redesigns.
This mission was always an engineering test mission designed to prove out Astrobotic’s landing design, so experiencing a failure was not a surprise. The problem is that this failure occurred so soon after launch that it prevents the company from testing that landing design, at all.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to updates by the engineering team running Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, launched early today by ULA’s Vulcan rocket, the lander’s propulsion system suffered a major failure shortly after activation.
After successfully separating from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander began receiving telemetry via the NASA Deep Space Network. Astrobotic-built avionics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit, as well as the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, all powered on and performed as expected. After successful propulsion systems activation, Peregrine entered a safe operational state. Unfortunately, an anomaly then occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation.
The company later released an update, stating that the failure caused “a critical loss of propellant” that will make the mission impossible as planned. They are reassessing to see if they can come up with an alternate plan, but without sufficient fuel no lunar landing will be possible under any mission profile.
Peregrine is a smaller test version of Astrobotic’s larger Griffin lunar lander, which has contracts with NASA and ESA for later missions. This failure will likely impact those missions, forcing either delays or redesigns.
This mission was always an engineering test mission designed to prove out Astrobotic’s landing design, so experiencing a failure was not a surprise. The problem is that this failure occurred so soon after launch that it prevents the company from testing that landing design, at all.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
All indications are that the performance of the booster stages was nominal, but there are scenarios where booster performance problems can cause a payload failure. I assume that ULA will be able to eliminate this possibility upon final analysis of the flight data.
The first case is excessive acceleration, which can occur with a small payload on a powerful rocket that has used a majority of its propellant. I recall hearing that Atlas boosters had to limit thrust to avoid accelerations over “n” Gs late in flight.
The next is excessive vibration, causing payload components to fail. Solid boosters tend to run rougher than liquids.
Finally there is a fairing jettison failure, where the separating fairing halves might strike the payload and damage it.
Again, I don’t mean to suggest that the Vulcan or Centaur V rockets are at fault – they appear to have performed perfectly, but a rocket can deliver a payload to a good orbit but still damage it. It will be good to see these scenarios eliminated.
The Centaur stage burned for about 10 seconds past where the stream indicated it would stop. Whether that indicates bad info on the stream, an underperformance of the booster or Centaur that needed to be corrected, a late shut-down, or something else has not been revealed. Given that there was no indication that it was off trajectory after Centaur shut down, it’s unlikely that whatever the issue, if any, was a major issue. Given the reported behavior of Peregrine after deployment, with intermittent communications drops and over-expenditure of propellant, it’s likely that they had problems keeping it oriented. Lots of potential causes for that, from sensor errors, a failed or malfunctioning thruster, wiring issues, a part of the upper stage mounting still being attached, etc.. Hopefully they’ll be able to identify the cause soon.
Major kudos to Astrobotic for their quick, transparent posture in updating everyone publicly on this mission. They didn’t obfuscate, or run and hide (looking at you, Roscosmos).
The mission is a failure now, alas, but they do at least have a fully charged battery, so hopefully they can salvage at least some technical and science aspects of the vehicle, and have a better shot at working through the fault tree. The latter is crucial, because they have another lander scheduled to take the considerably more valuable VIPER rover to the Moon later this year.
The Navajo did this. They are just dastardly.
The picture from Astrobotched-it seems to show a tomahawk chop…
“The picture from Astrobotched-it seems to show a tomahawk chop…”
Go Braves!
So are the Bidumbs going to shut down Astrobotics and ULA until the FAA/Fish and Wild Life/FCC/FTC/The White House Chef have “completed their analysis” ?
Maybe the Vulcan is a rough ride? Or the souped up Centaur.
Wonder what the data shows.