The US Peregrine lunar landing module will likely burn up in Earth’s atmosphere

The Peregrine lunar landing module from a failed U.S. private mission returns to Earth and is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. “Our latest assessment now shows that the spacecraft is on a path towards Earth, where it will likely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere,” operating company Astrobotic said on Saturday in the short message service X.

“As a reminder, a soft landing on the moon is not possible,” the Pittsburgh-based company added.

Peregrine was launched last Monday on a rocket from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida. After separation from the rocket, an explosion occurred and the lunar module began to leak fuel.

It soon became clear that a soft moon landing would not be a success. However, experts speculated that Astrobotic might consider an emergency landing on the moon. Despite the loss of fuel, scientific experiments were carried out on board the Peregrine, including for the American space agency NASA, and flight data was collected.

The original plan was for Peregrine to orbit the celestial body for several weeks after arriving at the moon and then land on February 23. Astrobotic wanted to become the first private company to successfully land on Earth’s satellite. NASA paid the company more than a hundred million dollars (about 91 million euros) for it.

Landing on the moon is an enormous challenge; about half of the attempts fail. So far, only the US, the Soviet Union, China and India have managed to land on the moon. (sda/afp)