On Wednesday (10th), aerospace company Astrobotic announced that its lunar lander “Peregrine” has “no chance of soft landing” due to a propellant leak. Astrobotic stated that the lander will continue to operate as a spacecraft, with the propellant expected to run out in about 40 hours. The team will continue to work on finding ways to extend the operational life of Peregrine. The company is currently receiving data and exploring spaceflight operations for components and software related to the next lunar lander mission, “Griffin”.
According to previous reports by Zombit, Peregrine, which carried physical Bitcoin and Dogecoin, successfully launched into space on Monday with the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket and separated from the rocket. However, after the failure of the lunar landing mission of Peregrine was announced, the lunar journey of Bitcoin and Dogecoin also came to naught.
Astrobotic released space photos taken by Peregrine in its mission update, showing the DHL MoonBox payload covered in Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) positioned slightly to the left in the middle of the photo. Astrobotic stated that it “contains hundreds of thousands of messages from people on Earth.”