The Peregrine spacecraft sent the first photo after entering space. Judging by this, earlier fears have been confirmed: no soft landing on the Moon. Before this, the USA had landed on the Earth’s natural satellite in 1972. Peregrine’s failure means the US may not be able to repeat the soft landing on the moon until the second half of the 2020s.

The American Vulcan rocket, which made its first flight on January 8, launched the Peregrine spacecraft produced by the private space company Astrobotic into space. It was carrying five scientific instruments to study the Gruythuysen domes region, an unusual region of the Moon covered with siliceous magma. It is considered a very important region by NASA because on Earth, siliceous magma only forms in areas where the edges of tectonic plates meet abundant water. But in Selena, according to the theory of mega-impact formation, which is still valid among NASA employees, there can be no water at depth: a collision with another planet should automatically heat the lunar material to supplement the thirst. Therefore, from a scientific perspective, certain expectations were formed from the device.

But shortly after taking off from Astrobotic reached The information that the device cannot direct itself with the engines on the Sun. Without such guidance, photocells cannot produce enough electricity to charge the battery and operate the device normally. They then tried to restore steering, but it turned out that the fuel near the device had almost run out, probably due to a leak in the tank. Then the company presented the first photo from Peregrine. Judging by how the stars appear in the picture, the device is still spinning.

In this context, Astrobotic noted that there is no longer talk of landing on the moon. The challenge now was to get Peregrine as close to lunar orbit as possible. In this way, it will be possible to understand whether some other technical and software decisions regarding the device are correct.