The "Peregrine Falcon," which carried out the "return to the moon" program for the first time in 52 years after the Apollo program was launched, was about to fail less than 24 hours after its launch, and the United States' hard work was all in vain.
According to the Global Times, the "Peregrine Falcon" was supposed to carry the "Vulcan Centaur" rocket developed by the United Launch Alliance, and was planned to be launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida, and achieve a "soft landing" on the lunar surface in late February. But due to the severe loss of propellant due to a system failure, many observers believe that the Peregrine mission may not be able to complete the soft landing on the moon as planned.
According to the official statement of the aerospace robotics company, the "Peregrine Falcon" first encountered the problem that the solar panel command could not be implemented after entering orbit, resulting in the inability to charge the sun.
However, when faced with the danger of power outage and loss of contact with the ground, the project team took emergency countermeasures and successfully executed a temporary maneuver command, allowing the "Peregrine Falcon" to adjust the angle of the solar panels to complete the charging, and successfully extended its operating time.
However, such a remedy is only a palliative treatment, and the failure of the attitude control and propulsion system that cannot be aligned with the sun remains, and according to the statement of Aerospace Robotics, the serious leakage of propellant is the result of the failure.
According to CNN, Aerospace Robotics believes that the Peregrine Falcon may end up operating for only 40 hours. At the moment, the only thing that can be done is to get the Peregrine Falcon as close to the Moon as possible before it loses its attitude and momentum to aim at the Sun. The U.S. moon landing program may have lost its possibility.
However, the failure of the U.S. lunar landing program this time is actually expected, compared to ULA, which has rich experience, the U.S. Aerospace Robotics Technology Company, which carried out the design of the "Peregrine" lunar lander, is really not well-known.
Founded in 2007 by Carnegie Mellon University professor Red Whittaker and his colleagues, the company focuses on developing space robotics for lunar and planetary missions. Their first payload was the Peregrine Falcon lunar lander.
The return to the moon program, which carries the dream of the United States to land on the moon for the second time, was actually handed over to a private company with little experience and deep background, and the United States is indeed "confident".
However, I don't know if the failure of the United States will be painful, you must know that according to public information in the United States, as of November 15, 2021, the United States has invested up to $40 billion in the Artemis plan. The total investment is expected to reach $93 billion by the end of 2025.
And now relevant people say that the current investment has been overrun, and if NASA spends so much money again, otherwise the project may not be able to go smoothly.
The failure of this lunar landing mission will have a certain impact on the US plan to return to the moon. For now, though, the failure of this mission will not have a direct impact on the Artemis 2 manned mission around the moon, which was originally planned for this year, and the subsequent Artemis 3 manned mission to the moon.
However, in the long run, this lunar landing mission led by the US commercial space company will have a certain impact on the subsequent lunar base construction plan.
According to another CNN report on January 8, a NASA staff member revealed that the top management is expected to officially announce the announcement that the Artemis 2 manned mission around the moon will be postponed for several months in mid-January local time.
The mission is not expected to begin before 2025, the sources said. Previously, NASA reports showed damage to the ground launch facilities used for the US Space Launch System, as well as accidental damage to the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft carrying astronauts, which posed a challenge to the smooth implementation of the Artemis 2 mission.
The U.S. lunar landing program has suffered repeated setbacks, and if the "Peregrine Falcon" fails to land on the moon and cannot be recovered, coupled with the damage to the heat shield and the damage to the ground launch facilities, NASA will definitely have to spend a lot of money on maintenance, and for NASA, which is already stretched thin, this money may not be able to come up.
Can the U.S. "Return to the Moon" program continue?