The American private lunar module Peregrine suffered an engine failure

The private lunar module Peregrine of the American company Astrobotic, launched as part of NASA’s lunar program, began to suddenly lose fuel due to a failure of the propulsion system about eight hours after launch. This was announced by the developer company Astrobotic.

“Unfortunately, a failure in the propulsion system leads to a critical loss of fuel, experts are trying to stabilize the level of the leak, but given the situation, the priority is to collect as much scientific information and data as possible,” Astrobotic said in a message on social network X (ex-Twitter). In addition, experts are evaluating possible alternative mission options using the device.

According to preliminary estimates, the fuel leak could have been caused by a malfunction in the propulsion system. If the hypothesis is confirmed, this may interfere with the soft landing of the Peregrine module on the Moon.

The Peregrine module was launched on January 7 by Astrobotic’s newest American Vulcan launch vehicle. The lunar module separated from the launch vehicle as normal. After maneuvering the probe’s solar antennas, Peregrine’s batteries began to charge from the sun, but suddenly, eight hours after launch, a fuel leak occurred.

Astrobotic developed the Peregrine lander under a contract with NASA. At the same time, NASA is only the formal customer of the service for delivering the module to the Moon, since the spacecraft does not belong to it, but to a private company. In the future, Peregrine may be used on missions of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.

Anastasia Larina