Peregrine Mission One
Peregrine Mission One — Astrobotic's lunar lander, the first mission of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, launched on 8 January 2024 on the first Vulcan rocket. A propellant leak shortly after launch ruled out a landing. It reached lunar distance on a long Earth orbit while four of NASA's five instruments collected data, and was steered into a controlled re-entry over the South Pacific on 18 January. (Its orbit is drawn representatively.)
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- Astrobotic / NASA
- Launched
- January 8, 2024
- Status
- Deorbited
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 0.996 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 1,461,182 km
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Venus
- 0.276 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
Peregrine was the lunar lander of the US company Astrobotic, and its first mission was the first flight of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme, under which companies carry NASA instruments to the Moon. It was launched at 07:18 UTC on 8 January 2024 on the first flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, with five NASA instruments and commercial payloads aboard. Shortly after launch a failure in its propulsion system caused a critical loss of propellant, which ruled out any landing on the Moon. The team kept it working anyway. It rode a long, elongated Earth orbit out to the Moon's distance, and four of the five NASA instruments powered on and collected data along the way, measuring radiation and chemical compounds around the lander. Its path was bringing it back toward Earth, and Astrobotic chose to keep it that way: after 10 days and 13 hours in space, Peregrine made a controlled re-entry over the South Pacific on 18 January 2024 and burned up.
- 2024Peregrine launches on a Vulcan rocketLaunch
The first flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, and of NASA's commercial Moon deliveries.
- 2024Propellant leakMilestone
A failure in its propulsion system rules out a landing on the Moon.
- 2024Controlled re-entryMission end
Over the South Pacific, after 10 days and 13 hours in space.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image