A US lunar lander has “no chance” of making a soft landing on the Moon due to a fuel leak, the company behind the mission says.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic said there was enough propellant to operate its Peregrine lander as a spacecraft.
The lander is expected to run out of fuel in about 40 hours, the firm said shortly after 17:00 GMT on Tuesday.
Peregrine ran into trouble almost as soon as it came off the top of its launch rocket on Monday.
“Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the Moon,” Astrobotic said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter.
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Truly the innovation offered only by the private sector
Private companies are allowed to have many failures before they succeed, unlike NASA who lose public goodwill and therefore potentially lose funding when they fail. SpaceX blew up a ton of rockets before they succeeded in having the first reusable rocket. It’s much faster to iterate this way but also more expensive, so NASA cant really operate this way. Although on the other hand all the private aerospace companies seem to rely on government subsidies so it’s pretty crappy we cant just fund NASA more.
@PoopingCough @SkybreakerEngineer
How about a different model where multiple governments fund a project so NASA is just one member, and give the project a name separate from nasa. Then when the natural fails occur they aren’t owned by nasa. Keeps the oligarchs out of the mix…
Points at SpaceX
They didn’t get the extended warranty.
Land it hard then 🤷🏻♂️
FR It ain’t like anyone’s gonna be popping by for a visit. Landed nicely on the surface or energetically buried 30m below the surface, the ashes are still on the moon.
a lunar orbital space station sure would be handy
Remember stuff like this when capitalists insist our species’ salvation is in growing/metastasizing our species on other worlds, instead of proving we can change our behaviors and practices to find homeostasis/equilibrium with the only world we evolved on that suits our biology first.
We haven’t even mastered traveling to our fucking moon.
You think we’re going to thrive on Mars or Titan’s hostile environments in anyone living’s lifetime? Why desperately attempt to spread when we can’t even yet care for one another or our COMMUNal home on the most human friendly rock we’re likely to ever encounter in our galaxy? This is the “Enter your First and Last name” part of the space faring species exam, and we’re failing spectacularly.
I’m all for us spreading to the stars… Once we’ve proven we can take care of this world and each other. If we can’t do it on this former paradise we’re reverse terraforming against ourselves, we’ll be slaughtered anywhere else in reach in short order.
Shouldn’t have stuck that stupid fucking Bitcoin shit inside.
