Tech ‘anomaly’ puts craft carrying Arthur C Clarke and JFK at risk
Struggle to stabilise solar panels after launch means private US mission may not be able to land
A PRIVATE mission to the Moon carrying the DNA of former presidents including John F Kennedy may not be able to land after suffering technical problems hours after takeoff.
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur launched from Florida at 7.18am UK time yesterday carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander, the first American spacecraft to attempt a Moon landing since the final Apollo in 1972.
About 50 minutes later, at around 310 miles above Earth, Peregrine successfully separated from Vulcan and entered “a fully operational state”, the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic said. But not long after, the firm reported a technical glitch preventing the 1.2-ton lander from pointing its solar panels at the sun.
The company believes the problem was caused by a “propulsion anomaly” which “if proven true, threatens the ability of the spacecraft to soft land on the Moon”.
It warned the lander’s battery was “reaching operationally low levels” and said the “mission anomaly board” was investigating the cause of the issue.
While in orbit, Peregrine’s top-mounted solar panel must point at the Sun to enable maximum power generation.
The firm later said it had re-established communications following a planned blackout and that an “improvised manoeuvre” to reposition the solar panels had been successful, with the battery now charging. Peregrine is supposed to land on a mid-latitude region of the Moon called Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, on Feb 23. Only a handful of nations have successfully performed a soft landing on the Moon.
The mission, which is partly backed by Nasa, comes as the US turns to the private sector to carry out routine missions and ship hardware at a fraction of the cost.
But the commercialisation of the project has led to a fallout with Navajo Nation, the largest indigenous tribe in the US, as it involves two private firms depositing the human remains on what the tribe regards as a sacred site.
Among the companies to have purchased payloads aboard the lander were space burial firms Celestis and Elysium Space, with the former charging people £10,000 ($13,000) to send the cremated remains of their loved ones to the Moon as “a permanent memorial on a distant, but constantly viewable world”.
The plan is for around 70 samples of human remains to land on the Moon, while the rest will carry on into deep space. Among the raft of DNA samples are hair clippings from former presidents George Washington, Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower, and the remains of
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. The remains of Arthur C Clarke, the sci-fi author and scientist, are also onboard.
The move sparked outrage from Buu Nygren, the Navajo Nation president. “The act of depositing human remains ... which could be perceived as discards in any other location, on the Moon is tantamount to desecration of this sacred space”, Mr Nygren said.
Joel Kearns, the Nasa deputy associate administrator for exploration, said it took the concerns “very seriously” but had limited oversight on a mission run by the private sector and would not remove the cargo.