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Mission failure feared for private US Moon lander — what’s next?

Astrobotic, the firm that launched the Peregrine spacecraft, says it will learn from any missteps and look ahead to its next attempt.
  1. Alexandra Witze
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A commercial spacecraft that was making a bid to become the first US Moon lander in more than 50 years ran into trouble hours after its 8 January launch. The probe, known as Peregrine, made it off Earth and into deep space — but soon began to leak propellant and tumble out of control. Engineers managed to temporarily get it into a stable configuration that allowed sunlight to fall on its solar panels and charge its battery, but the mission probably won’t achieve its aim of landing on the Moon on 23 February.

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Nature 625, 430-431 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00038-3

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 19 January 2024: An earlier version of this story said that five NASA payloads on board Peregrine are worth $108 million. That’s the amount NASA contributed to help develop Peregrine.

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