Astrobotic has narrowed down the probable source of the issues besetting its Peregrine lunar lander.

The goal of Peregrine’s launch aboard United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket on Monday, January 8, was to become the first private spacecraft to land softly on the moon.

However, a fuel leak that appeared soon after Peregrine unfolded from the rocket’s upper stage crushed that hope. Since then, Astrobotic has been debugging and examining the problem, and the business might now be aware of what went wrong.

“Astrobotic’s current hypothesis about the Peregrine spacecraft’s propulsion anomaly is that a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer failed to reseal after actuation during initialization,” company representatives wrote in a post on X Tuesday afternoon (Jan. 9).

“This led to a rush of high-pressure helium that spiked the pressure in the oxidizer tank beyond its operating limit and subsequently ruptured the tank,” they added.

Regarding the Peregrine anomaly, Astrobotic has been remarkably open: this afternoon’s update on X was the seventh the business has released since the disclosure.

The business stated in update number seven, which Astrobotic published earlier on Tuesday, that the fuel leak will obstruct Peregrine’s scheduled moon landing. The lander is in a steady functioning mode and has around 40 hours of propellant remaining, according to that update.

Twenty payloads are being transported by Peregrine for a range of clients, including NASA, which used the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to place five scientific equipment on the lander. Not one of these payloads will arrive at its target.

second month, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Nova-C lander from Houston-based Intuitive Machines will make the second CLPS liftoff for the moon.
With the launch of Peregrine, Vulcan Centaur—which will eventually replace ULA’s aging Atlas V and Delta rockets—made its much-anticipated premiere. Monday’s work by Vulcan Centaur was excellent, according to Astrobotic.

In update number eight, Astrobotic reported that the rocket “inserted Peregrine into the planned translunar trajectory without issue.” “There is no indication that the propulsion anomaly occurred as a result of the launch.”