Last week, an American spacecraft sent to the moon crashed over the Atlantic Ocean.The spacecraft Peregrine Lander, which was sent to the moon, suffered a technical failure during the journey and its chances of reaching the moon were completely lost.
In this situation, the company that sent the Peregrine lander to the moon destroyed it by remote control over the Atlantic Ocean.
This spacecraft belonged to the private company Astrobotic located in the American city of Pittsburgh, which was destroyed by turning towards the earth. According to a tracking station in Canberra, Australia, Peregrine lost contact with the ground at 8:59 PM GMT and its signals stopped.
The chances of finding the remains of a peregrine in the sea after a catastrophe are almost nil, and even if it were, the remains would be found far away from human populations.
Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company, aimed to deliver five NASA instruments to the moon by spacecraft to help study the atmosphere on the moon's surface before landing astronauts in the same decade.
If Peregrine had successfully landed on the moon, it would have been the first American mission to land on the moon in half a century. No private company has been able to land its spacecraft on the moon before. However, the government agencies of America, Russia, China and India have successfully landed their respective missions on the moon.
Astrobotic's mission ran into difficulties as soon as it was brought to the launch pad on January 8. But the company can console itself by thinking that it managed to operate Peregrine for almost 10 days under such difficult conditions. Engineers were able to diagnose the cause of Peregrin's failure. Sean Cleaver, industrial manager attached to the Airbus Orion European Service Module, said, "Space exploration is always learning, and I don't think we should compare the Peregrine lander disaster to a failure."
"We should see it as a major engineering achievement," he added. At one point it looked as if the mission was in jeopardy, but a team of engineers and scientists worked together to solve the problem and restore the Peregrine's capabilities by returning it to Earth and destroying it.
"I think it's fascinating, we can learn a lot from this, but space travel is a difficult task and that's what we're seeing."
Astrobotic's team also posted a video on social media showing images of the Earth taken by the spacecraft before the disaster.
The failure of Pregreen is being attributed to a malfunction in the oxidizer tank due to which the spacecraft's solar panels failed to face the Sun. Astrobotic is the first of three American companies to partner with NASA to send a mission to the moon. Astrobotic's transport services have been acquired by NASA and are also working with two other companies, Initiative Machines and Firefly. Under this partnership, six missions are to be sent to the moon by 2024.
Astronauts will get another chance to send a mission to the moon later this year when they attempt to land NASA's Viper rover on the moon. Houston-based company Initiative Machines will also try to send its first mission to the moon next month, which will be aimed at the southern side of the moon.
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