2024-01-09 20:17:20
The American private moon lander which took off on Monday January 8 but experienced serious problems in flight shortly afterwards did not ” no chance “ to be able to land softly on the Moon as planned, Astrobotic, which developed the device, said on Tuesday. Because of a ” leak “ fuel, “There is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the Moon”the company said in a statement published on.
The mission was to mark the first landing of an American spacecraft on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program more than fifty years ago. Astrobotic could also have become the first private company to successfully land on the Moon. Despite this failure, “we still have enough fuel to continue piloting the vehicle like a ship”Astrobotic said. “We currently estimate that we will run out of fuel in approximately forty hours. »
The young start-up, based in Pennsylvania, said it continues to receive “valuable data” for its next attempt to land on the Moon.
The machine took off Monday from Florida, aboard the new Vulcan Centaur rocket from the ULA industrial group. The lander, named Peregrine, was developed by Astrobotic with financial support from NASA, which commissioned this company to transport scientific equipment to the Moon, a contract worth $108 million.
The launch inaugurated a series of lunar missions supported by the American space agency, eager to encourage the development of a lunar economy. In recent years, private Israeli and Japanese companies have also attempted to land on the moon, but these missions ended in crashes.
To date, only four nations – the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India – have successfully landed a device on the Moon.
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