by The upcoming liftoff of a lunar lander, the Peregrine One Mission, is cause for concern for many reasons. As a privately built spacecraft, it represents an initiative driven by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Cargo Services (CLPS) initiative.
He Pilgrim lunar lander It was manufactured by Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company, and carries a variety of commercial and NASA payloads.
So Pittsburgh could soon be considered a gateway to Moontogether with NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston and Florida’s Space Coast. To help make this connection, there is an adjacent Moonshot Museum at Astrobotic headquarters that offers the public a first-hand look at the development of the lunar lander.
Peregrine Mission One will launch from the Space Coast on January 8, in the first liftoff of the new United Launch Alliance (ULA). vulcan centaur rocket.
The private lunar lander is scheduled to touch down in late February, planting its paws in the moon’s Sinus Viscositatis (Sticky Bay), adjacent to the Gruitheisen Domes. The landing target is on the northeastern edge of Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms).
Related: The private Peregrine lunar lander is stacked on the ULA Vulcan rocket ahead of the January 8 launch
Long and winding journey
Peregrine represents prime-time history in the making; seeks to become the first private lander to achieve a landing on the moon. But Astrobotic doesn’t do it alone; There are seven different countries on board this remarkable mission.
NASA has also invested a lot. Peregrine Mission One is one of the first calling cards to help restart the space agency’s human exploration of the moon. artemis program.
“It’s taken many years to get here,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told Space.com in an exclusive interview. “For me, it’s been 16 years with the company since its inception in 2007.”
It’s been a long and winding journey here on Earth to get to the Moon, Thornton added. “It certainly seemed very different back then. We were talking Google X Award, trying to build a business and trying to get payload sales going. I always knew it was going to be extremely difficult. “I knew it was going to be hard work.”
Thornton said that for many years, due to political changes and stop-start space policy, the moon was a four-letter word at NASA. “We had a lot of people doubting us, laughing at us, and it was very difficult to find support. But we found enough support over the years to reach the critical mass that got us to where we are now,” he said. .
Great effort
Getting to the moon requires a great effort. Through NASA’s CLPS, the government is working with several American companies to bring science and technology to the lunar surface on robotic missions.
“I think we are close to a sustainable model [the teaming of government with the private sector]but I don’t think we’re there yet,” Thornton said. The right level of technical risk, required financial filters and other factors have been a challenge in formulating NASA’s CLPS, he added.
“In my opinion, the next step for CLPS is to get to CLPS 2.0,” Thornton said. “I am a big supporter of creating more stability and certainty for the industry, so we can better take advantage of supply chain opportunities and increasingly build a reliable, sustainable and mature industry to return to the surface of the moon.”
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astrobot team
Thornton sees significant demand and interest from the scientific community in private lunar exploration. The additional good news is the availability of technology, allowing researchers and exploration advocates to purchase, rather than invent, flight computers, avionics, and other hardware for Moon-bound spacecraft.
But preparation for lunar missions remains complicated. “We can’t fly the lander here on Earth in the environment that is the moon,” Thornton said. “There is no way to simulate lunar gravity and there is no way to have that also in a vacuum environment. In our opinion, that’s really the biggest challenge.”
Thornton is proud of the Astrobots team who have worked hard to shape the company today and put it on a firm footing for the future. This team is made up of Astrobotic’s four departments: lunar landings, planetary mobility, space technology and business development.
Peregrine Mission One’s payload manifest is peculiar in some ways. For example, it includes a digital art gallery, a lunar Bitcoin, a dream capsule containing messages from 80,000 children around the world, robotic technology, cremations for deceased loved ones (including Gene Roddenberry and others).Star Trek” luminaries), as well as “MoonBoxes” organized by the company DHL that contain souvenirs, one of which contains a piece of Mount Everest.
pucker factor
Having Peregrine Mission One fly on Vulcan’s first liftoff clearly adds more tension. “Absolutely, there’s no question,” Thornton said. “It definitely has a wrinkle factor.”
What gives Astrobotic comfort, Thornton added, is ULA’s long history of success with its other rockets, such as the workhorse. Atlas V. “They’ve certainly done everything possible at every stage to make the first one a success,” he said of Vulcan’s upcoming debut.
Astrobotic has not released the cost of Peregrine Mission One, but it is around $100 million, Thornton said.
Important conclusion
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The launch of Peregrine is the start of a commercial move, one of 10 CLPS missions that will head to the lunar landscape in the near future. And even if Peregrine suffers a problem during launch or landing, that movement will continue, Thornton stressed.
“Failure is going to happen, hopefully not for us. This is a mission that has been accomplished with relatively little money. And this is how we are going to innovate. This is how we are going to take the next big step,” he said. “It should be routine and regular, but we can’t achieve it unless we try again and again.”
And failure in this mission would not mean that the program failed. “It’s an opportunity to learn and improve,” Thornton said. “We have benefited greatly from what we have learned from this first mission… and we are only going to learn more from now on. That is the most important takeaway that we are going to emphasize if there is a bad day.”
