Astrobotic, which developed the Peregrine lunar lander, reported on January 9 that the spacecraft was losing fuel due to a malfunction in the propulsion system
TASS-DOSSIER. On January 9, 2024, the American company Astrobotic, which developed the Peregrine lunar lander, reported that the spacecraft was losing fuel due to a malfunction in the propulsion system. Peregrine was launched on January 8 by the new American Vulcan launch vehicle from the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome (Florida, USA). He was supposed to reach the moon on February 23rd. According to the developer, with the help of auxiliary power plants, Peregrine will be able to maintain the desired course for about 40 hours. Astrobotic will try to bring the spacecraft "as close to lunar orbit as possible" until it finally loses energy.
TASS has prepared material on the past failures of US lunar missions and on unsuccessful launches in recent years by other countries.
History
The moon is the first celestial body to which spacecraft were sent from Earth, and the only extraterrestrial astronomical object visited by humans. The USSR and the USA were the first to implement their lunar programs in the late 1950s. On August 17, 1958, the United States attempted to launch the Pioneer-0 spacecraft to the Moon. On September 23 of the same year, the USSR tried to launch the Luna-1A spacecraft into space. However, both launches failed due to launch vehicle accidents.
In total, since 1958, at least 134 missions (including small vehicles launched along the way) have been undertaken and sent to the Moon by eight countries and the European Space Agency, of which 60 failed (including Peregrine) and 8 were partially successful.
American Pioneer, Ranger and Surveyor programs
As part of the Pioneer program, which was developed to explore interplanetary space and some celestial bodies of the Solar System, the United States in 1958-1960 tried to send automatic vehicles to the Moon. Launched on August 17, 1958, Pioneer was lost from a Thor-Able launch vehicle accident. The next three vehicles did not have enough design speed to enter the trajectory to the Moon. Pioneer 4 (it was the fifth in a row) managed to partially achieve its goal - it flew 60 thousand km from the celestial body. Attempts to launch the last four vehicles failed due to launch vehicle accidents. Overall, out of 9 attempts to send Pioneer to the Moon, only 1 was partially successful.
In 1961-1965, the United States implemented the Ranger program in order to obtain images of the Moon from a close distance. The first launch of the automatic device was unsuccessful due to problems with the launch vehicle. Ranger-2 was unable to enter the flight path to the Moon due to a gyroscope malfunction. Ranger-3 flew past the Moon due to a guidance system error, Ranger-5 - due to a power failure. Ranger-4's solar panels did not open due to a timer malfunction, and it crashed into the Moon without transmitting useful data. The sixth device also collided with the Moon, unable to transmit images due to a camera malfunction. Thus, of the nine launched vehicles, only the last three managed to complete their mission.
The next US lunar program was Surveyor. Her task was to carry out a soft landing on the surface of the Earth's satellite. Unlike previous American lunar programs, the first flight was successful - on June 2, 1966, Surveyor-1 successfully landed. The next vehicle (Surveyor-2), launched in the same year, crashed on landing due to the failure of one of the engines. In 1967, Surveyor-4 stopped communicating two and a half minutes before the lunar landing. As a result, of the seven devices launched in 1966-1968, two failed to fulfill their tasks.
Manned Apollo Program (USA)
The Americans were the first to send a man to the moon as part of the Apollo program. However, its beginning was overshadowed by the Apollo 1 disaster, the crew of which died on January 27, 1967 during pre-flight tests on earth in the cockpit of a spacecraft in a fire. The fire was caused by a short circuit, the source of which has not been identified. It led to catastrophic consequences due to the use of combustible materials in the cabin and the unsuccessful design of the hatch.
The second failure of the program occurred in April 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded on the way to the Moon at Apollo 13, which led to the failure of the ship's main power plant and problems with the air regeneration system. The crew of three astronauts managed to return safely to Earth. The cause of the accident was an oversight in the design of liquid oxygen tanks: their electronic systems were originally designed for a voltage of 28 volts, then they were converted to 65 volts, but NASA specialists and contractors forgot to replace the voltage at the thermostat contacts. Two weeks before the launch of Apollo 13, the contacts melted during testing due to high voltage. The tank exploded when the astronauts turned on the heating during the flight.
In total, nine manned flights to the Moon were carried out within the framework of the Apollo program (including six landings on the surface of the Earth's satellite). All of them were successful, except for Apollo 13.
Unsuccessful missions of other countries over the past five years
In 2019, the mission of the Israeli private interplanetary probe Bereshit, designed to land on the moon, failed. It was created by the non-profit organization SpaceIL with the participation of the Israeli Space Agency. Bereshit was launched on February 22, 2019 by the Falcon 9 launch vehicle of the American company SpaceX from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome (Florida, USA). On April 11, 2019, Bereshit crashed while landing on the surface of the moon.
July 22, 2019 India launched the Chandrayan-2 automatic station using an LVM3 launch vehicle launched from the Space Center. Satish Dhawan on the island of Sriharikota in the Bay of Bengal. The main purpose of the mission was to deliver the Vikram landing platform with the Pragyan lunar rover to the south Pole area of the Earth satellite. However, on September 6, 2019, the landing on the Moon of the Vikram module failed, communication with it was lost at an altitude of 2.1 km from the lunar surface.
On November 16, 2022, the United States launched from the Space Center named after John F. Kennedy in Florida launched the SLS (Space Launch System) launch vehicle with the Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis lunar program, which successfully flew around the Moon and returned to Earth on December 11 of the same year. At the same time, 4 small lunar vehicles launched together with Orion were unable to complete their tasks. Among them was the Japanese OMOTENASHI lander, designed to test the technology of a "semi-rigid" landing on the surface of an Earth satellite. The rest of the devices belonged to the USA.
On December 11, 2022, an international mission was launched from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome using a Falcon 9 launch vehicle - the Japanese Hakuto-R lander with the Rashid planetary rover of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the small Japanese SORA-Q robot planetary rover. On April 25, 2023, Hakuto-R accelerated sharply in the last seconds before landing and communication with it was lost. According to experts, the spacecraft made a hard landing on the Moon. The mission was deemed unsuccessful.
On August 11, 2023, from the Vostochny cosmodrome (Amur region) The launch of the Luna-25 spacecraft was carried out, which became the first spacecraft in modern Russia sent to a natural satellite of the Earth. On August 16, the automatic station entered lunar orbit, where it conducted scientific observations and measurements. But she did not fulfill her main task - landing near the south pole of the Moon. On August 19, communication with Luna-25 was lost. According to Roscosmos, due to the abnormal functioning of the on-board control system, the AMS was unable to move into a pre-landing orbit and fell onto the surface of the Earth satellite.
