More than four days after its takeoff, and despite a fuel leak that doomed the mission to failure, an American company’s moon lander continues as best it can to operate in space — at least for the moment .
The start-up Astrobotic, having developed the Peregrine lander, was to attempt the first landing of an American device on the Moon in more than 50 years.
But the company announced earlier this week that the device would not be able to land on the lunar surface as planned.
Despite everything, the Astrobotic teams continue to look for “solutions to extend its lifespan”, declared Friday the company, which is now operating it as a vessel in order to gather as much data as possible for a future attempt.
According to the young company, the anomaly encountered shortly after takeoff on Monday could come from a valve that had malfunctioned and caused a “tank to rupture.” Result: a fuel leak affects from the lander.
Astrobotic has not given up, and its efforts have paid off: the machine has for the moment managed to stay on its trajectory, and move more than 350,000 kilometers from Earth.
Cargo on board, including NASA scientific instruments, successfully transmitted data. Two of them carry out in-flight radiation measurements, NASA said.
“Sending a ship to the Moon is not easy,” Nicky Fox, associate administrator at NASA responsible for scientific missions, wrote on X (ex-Twitter). “I salute the hard work, tenacity and commitment of Astrobotic as they face the challenges of their mission.”
How the lander will end its adventure is not yet clear, although some space buffs speculate about a possible crash on the lunar surface.
