Peregrine Lander Fuel Leakage Deals Severe Blow to U.S. Lunar Mission
U.S. private space robotics company Astrobotic said that the lunar lander "Peregrine", which lifted off with the new "Vulcan" rocket on August 8, has lost too much fuel and has no chance of making a soft landing on the moon, which is undoubtedly a major blow to the U.S.'s hopes of sending a lander to the moon for the first time in the past 50 years!
According to Astrobotic's calculations, Peregrine only has about 40 hours of fuel left for flight, and Astrobotic intends to keep Peregrine running until it runs out of propellant. Peregrine was originally scheduled to make a soft landing in the Sinus Viscositatis region on Feb. 23, after circling the Moon's orbit for several weeks following its arrival. Today, Astrobotic engineers have a limited amount of time to continue to receive information, data, and test software related to the next lunar landing mission.
It is reported that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States previously expected to send four astronauts to the Moon by the end of this year (2024), but later postponed the mission to September 2025 due to technical problems. Now, Peregrine's mission to perform a soft landing on the moon has been thwarted, and it has to postpone its mission to carry people to the moon again, with the earliest possible time expected to be September 2026," he said.
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