A crippled American spaceship has been lost over a remote region of the South Pacific, probably burning up in the atmosphere in a fiery end to its failed mission to land on the Moon.
Ten days after its launch, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander fell back to Earth today, ending a trip to the moon’s orbital distance and back that was doomed by a propellant leak. The mission began auspiciously on the night of Oct. 7-8 with a seemingly successful liftoff from Florida on United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan Centaur rocket, powered by Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines. But hours after launch, the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic team detected a problem with the propulsion system. So
US lunar lander Peregrine has ended its operation following post-launch problems and failing to make a soft landing on the lunar surface as planned, the Astrobotic Company announced on Friday.