Last week, the space world watched in horror and disbelief as the first U.S. lunar lander since Apollo launched to the moon, only to quickly run into trouble. Unfortunately, Peregrine soon suffered from a propellant leak, ultimately forcing Astrobotic to reroute the lander to Earth, where it was certain to burn out and be destroyed during reentry. It turned out that.
It wasn’t the most exciting ending to one of the most anticipated space missions of 2024, but one report says the destruction of Astrobotic’s iconic lander was probably the best outcome and was even prompted by NASA. It is said that
Peregrine was Astrobotic’s first space mission. So the company is still learning a lot. That’s totally fine. But when the Peregrine lander found itself facing destruction during its mission, Astrobotic turned to her NASA.
Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said NASA’s recommendation was to send the lander back to Earth so it could be burned up during atmospheric reentry and safely disposed of. . (via ars technica)
Sure, they might have tried to reach the moon. In fact, the propellant leak that caused the chaos appeared to have stopped by the time the spacecraft moved on.
However, it would have been necessary to ignite the main engines to keep Peregrine off its flight path and return to Earth, where it could be safely destroyed. And if we did that, the whole thing would probably explode, raining debris into the space around the moon.
Given that the upcoming Artemis mission is still underway, sending large amounts of debris into space around the moon probably isn’t the wisest move. That’s why NASA recommended burning out peregrines in Earth’s atmosphere. True, that means the mission has failed. But it also meant that subsequent missions wouldn’t have to avoid debris on their journey to the moon.