It is over. For Astrobiotic’s Peregrine moon lander mission that is. The Pittsburgh-based company lost contact with the moon lander at 2.20 AM on Friday, and the spacecraft itself probably burned up in atmosphere to put an end to a mission that was doomed shortly after launch. But a few hours later, at 8.50 PM the same day, Japan’s “SLIM” mission made it to the moon, but not all is well.
Peregrine’s fate was decided long before Friday. It launched on January 8 on the debut flight of the United Launch Alliance’s Centaur rocket. The Centaur rocket, built in a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, did its job well. But shortly after Peregrine separated from the launch vehicle, the spacecraft spouted a leak.
The Astrobiotic mission was meant to be the first American mission to soft-land on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. But after they got to know about the fuel leak, Astrobiotic changed the mission’s objective and decided to operate it more like a satellite. They tested the scientific instruments onboard and other systems as Peregrine flew thousands of kilometres. In the end, Astrobiotic put it on a course to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Not only would it have been the first US soft-landing on the Moon in decades, but it could also have been the first privately-led mission to ever land on the Moon. It followed in the footsteps of the Israeli Beresheet mission in 2019 and the UTO mission in 2023. Unfortunately, it was not able to get as far as those two missions which actually managed to crash land on the Moon.
But the grass is greener on the other side.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Friday confirmed that its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) successfully landed on the Moon’s surface. With soft-landing, there are currently five countries in history that have displayed the capability of soft-landing on the moon — the United States, the erstwhile Soviet Union, China, India, and now, Japan.
But it was not all sunshine and butterflies for the Japanese mission called the “moon sniper” because it was designed to land within 100 metres of its targets, instead of within kilometres, like is common with landings on Earth’s lone natural satellite. Unfortunately, the spacecraft’s solar cells do not seem to be generating any power.
JAXA put the lander through some “life-sustaining” treatments like turning off its heater. But even with that, the battery will only last for a few hours on the lunar surface. JAXA is resting its hopes on the possibility that a shift in the sunlight’s angle will hit the solar panels in such a way that it can begin working again.
Japan's Hakuto, Russia's Luna-25, Chandrayaan-3, Peregrine, and the SLIM mission. This is just the list of moon missions that happened over the last two years, some successful and some not.
We already know that the new space race, with its many new players, is a race to establish a sustained presence on the Moon. Once we establish a base on the Moon, we can use that as a springboard to easily send missions to the rest of the solar system and beyond. While that ambition is quite far away, our spacefaring ambitions have already given us many technologies that we take for granted from smartphone cameras to memory foam mattresses.
Now, our space technology advancements might bring us something really cool — the ability to connect to satellite networks directly using nothing but our smartphones. Existing satellite communication technologies either require that we have specialised hardware like a satellite terminal (Starlink) or a special satellite phone.
But now, GoogleAT&T and Vodafone have invested over $155 million in Texas-based AST SpaceMobile to help the company build direct-to-smartphone satellite communication technology. The company in 2023 worked with AT&T, Vodafone, Rakuten and Nokia to demonstrate 2G, 4G and 5G calls along with 14 Mbps download speeds over 5 Mhz channels directly from its satellite to normal smartphones.
Google, in particular, will collaborate with the company on product development, testing and implementation to get SpaceMobile connectivity to Android smartphones and other devices.
So yes, we have had two moon missions trying to reach the lunar surface this year. One failed, and the fate of the other remains undecided. But as long as some of the best minds of our world focus on the universe beyond our world, they will continue to build technologies that both you and I can use every day.
