Moon Lander Problem Threatens Mission After Vulcan Rocket Makes Successful Debut (reuters.com) 51
necro81 writes: ULA's Vulcan rocket, many years in development, had a successful first launch this morning from Cape Canaveral. The expendable rocket, which uses two methane-fueled BE-4 engines from Blue Origin in its first stage, is the successor to the Delta and Atlas-V launch vehicles.
Years overdue, and with a packed manifest for future launches, Vulcan is critical to the ULA's continued existence. The payload on this first mission is called Peregrine -- a lunar lander from Astrobotic. Unfortunately, Peregrine has suffered an anomaly some hours into flight; it is unclear whether the mission can recover. UPDATE: According to Reuters, Peregrine's propulsion system experienced issues hours after separating from Vulcan, "preventing the spacecraft from angling itself toward the sun for power."
"While mission engineers regained control, the faulty propulsion system is losing valuable propellant, forcing Astrobotic to consider 'alternative mission profiles,' suggesting a moon landing is no longer achievable," reports Reuters.
In the most recent update (#5) on X, Astrobotic said in a statement: "We've received the first image from Peregrine in space! The camera utilized is mounted atop a payload deck and shows Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) in the foreground. The disturbance of the MLI is the first visual clue that aligns with out telemetry data that points to a propulsion system anomaly. Nonetheless, the spacecraft's battery is now fully charged, and we are using Peregrine's existing power to perform as many payload and spacecraft operations as possible. At this time, the majority of our Peregrine mission team has been awake and working diligently for more than 24 hours. We ask for your patience as we reassess incoming data so we can provide ongoing updates later this evening."
Years overdue, and with a packed manifest for future launches, Vulcan is critical to the ULA's continued existence. The payload on this first mission is called Peregrine -- a lunar lander from Astrobotic. Unfortunately, Peregrine has suffered an anomaly some hours into flight; it is unclear whether the mission can recover. UPDATE: According to Reuters, Peregrine's propulsion system experienced issues hours after separating from Vulcan, "preventing the spacecraft from angling itself toward the sun for power."
"While mission engineers regained control, the faulty propulsion system is losing valuable propellant, forcing Astrobotic to consider 'alternative mission profiles,' suggesting a moon landing is no longer achievable," reports Reuters.
In the most recent update (#5) on X, Astrobotic said in a statement: "We've received the first image from Peregrine in space! The camera utilized is mounted atop a payload deck and shows Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) in the foreground. The disturbance of the MLI is the first visual clue that aligns with out telemetry data that points to a propulsion system anomaly. Nonetheless, the spacecraft's battery is now fully charged, and we are using Peregrine's existing power to perform as many payload and spacecraft operations as possible. At this time, the majority of our Peregrine mission team has been awake and working diligently for more than 24 hours. We ask for your patience as we reassess incoming data so we can provide ongoing updates later this evening."
First thing to check (Score:5, Funny)
Were there any Navajo flight engineers? /j
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stop the bots they can't make coherent sentences yet
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Were there any Navajo flight engineers? /j
You jest, but millions of "likes" when he finally posts about it on social media, plus then the legal system will try to understand his "root causes" and will go easy on him ... hey, weirder things have happened, lol
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That or aerospace engineering is difficult.
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Indian engineers? Not that kind of Indian.
Rough ride on the way up? (Score:2)
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Today's engineers being used to delivering bananaware and fixing it with patches may be a good reason.
Re:Rough ride on the way up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Space is hard and the failure rate has always been high.
That said, it's ironic that when a SpaceX thing explodes it's just rapid iteration and a learning experience, when anyone else fails it's because they are millennial/gen z idiots who can't do anything right.
Re:Rough ride on the way up? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It sounds very much like they were planning alternative missions if something didn't work. The rocket was supposed to work perfectly, but the lunar lander is another project and was basically hitching a ride on a demonstration mission. Probably got it cheap due to the risk of the rocket itself failing.
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That's because milennial/gen z idiots don't have a reality distortion field. If they'd been smart like Elon, they'd have had rich parents.
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Nah, when SpaceX crap explodes, I usually wonder what the muskrat did this time to fuck things up.
What is scary to me is that while the faithful cheered as the StarShip started tumbling and ignored the FTS command, that Flight Termination System is such a fundamental bedrock of rocketry that it left me aghast.
That is what engineers call a maximum pucker moment.
And that's what concerns me, at least a little. Glorifying failure breeds more failure. I guess the good part is that his cult just sits on the sideline and sniffs his farts and calls them roses. They aren't as influential other than damaging
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Hoooooold it right there, the thing ignored a self-destruct command?
I think it's time to review the spaceworthy certification of the whole deal.
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Hoooooold it right there, the thing ignored a self-destruct command?
I think it's time to review the spaceworthy certification of the whole deal.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/... [futurism.com] The first flight did not, although many astroturfed it, to make the first flight some kind of success.
This is my problem - the whole fail early concept isn't supposed to be dealing with elementary and basic systems. No one today should be launching unprepared vehicles and crowing about their unprecedented successes. So far, StarShip is doing more or less what it's doppleganger, the Soviet N1 Rocket has done.
Flight termination systems aren't supposed to fail. Launch
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Ground that shit until we know why it didn't.
I refuse to read any more until that is resolved. If I CAN NOT blow up an unmanned craft, I don't need to hear anything else until I get a GOOD explanation why, and a confirmation that it has been resolved.
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Hoooooold it right there, the thing ignored a self-destruct command?
No. The antenna's were damaged, so it did not receive the destruct command sent by ground control. The onboard systems initiated the self-destruct when it determined that the rocket was veering off of it's flight plan. This is why there are redundant systems.
At least they demonstrated that the onboard emergency systems work properly... :)
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[...]it's ironic that when a SpaceX thing explodes it's just rapid iteration and a learning experience, when anyone else fails it's because they are millennial/gen z idiots who can't do anything right.
More like because they are years behind on launching anything and billions of dollars over budget on doing it? At least when SpaceX blows shit up, they just immediately roll out a new version and try again.
And trying to deflect the problem as a millennial/gen-z thing is bullshit. The ULA leaches are mostly not newbs -they have been doing this for decades. This is all part of the SLS (Senate Lunch System) program for spreading pork around to buy votes.
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Huh? You want to put this on ULA?
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The Chinese did it with 2013 tech, and again in 2019. They even brought back a couple kilos of lunar soil in 2020. The Indians also landed there a few months ago, so it must be getting pretty hard to maintain your denial by now.
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You know, maybe thinking that in the middle of the Cold War, the US and the USSR collaborated to pull off the biggest prank in history - faking a landing on the Moon. It made the USSR look bad, but it doesn't matter if you can then laugh about fooling everyone with the US president. And yeah, it had to be done only for the lulz, since there would be no real gain for either side.
Re:Proof the moon landing was a fake. (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems apparent that Buzz Aldrin really needed to punch more people.
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The originator of fuck around and find out.
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Land some more Eagles.
Re:Proof the moon landing was a fake. (Score:4, Funny)
You know, maybe thinking that in the middle of the Cold War, the US and the USSR collaborated to pull off the biggest prank in history - faking a landing on the Moon. It made the USSR look bad, but it doesn't matter if you can then laugh about fooling everyone with the US president. And yeah, it had to be done only for the lulz, since there would be no real gain for either side.
Ah, you see, the twist is that the moon landings were faked, and filmed by Director Stanley Kubrick. This is, he was such a perfectionist that he made NASA go to the moon to film the fake landings on site.
WAKE UP AMERICA!
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The argument for that it being fake is Russia would have called it out decades ago.
Serpentor (Score:2)
If all that DNA gets lost in space how are Doctor Mindbender and Destro supposed to create Serpentor?
Crappy engineering (Score:2)
Makes for crappy results. Obviously, this is engineering at the limit, but there is by far enough experience around to get it right. Somebody went cheap and it was likely not the engineers.
I've got an "alternative mission profile" (Score:1)
Re: I've got an "alternative mission profile" (Score:2)
why is the moon suddenly so difficult? (Score:2)
We've had a pretty good track record recently with Mars, I don't see why everyone seems to keep having problems with the moon missions lately.
The only lander that seems to have had any success recently is from China, and unfortunately they're one of those states that will only share positive things and hides any failures they can, so it's difficult to even tell just how well or poorly that one's doing.
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Mars has an atmosphere. You can slow your craft with parachutes. No can do on the moon.
There is no atmosphere for your propellant to work against it is purely mass being ejected from engines to move your mass in the other direction. Think about the ratio of mass when it comes to inertia. 1 kilogram of propellant trying to move metric tons of spacecraft.
Re:why is the moon suddenly so difficult? (Score:4, Informative)
When space experts are asked to compare mars to other places like earth or the moon, they usually refer to mars as a bigger problem. "It has just enough atmosphere to be a problem. There's enough of it that you have to deal with atmospheric heating on entry, but there's not enough of it to make soft landings easy".
With earth you can use the atmosphere to brake into orbit which requires a heat shield and can be tricky, but then you just pop a chute and land softly. On the moon you don't need a heat shield, but you need a powered descent. (although the gravity is much weaker so you need far less propellant than you would on earth)
Mars is a much bigger challenge than either the earth or moon, because it's two big challenges instead of one or the other. (yet we seem to be able to pull it off about 75% of the time)
Though that's for landing. Takeoff is a different story. Earth's strong gravity and thick atmosphere are a double challenge for getting into orbit. Mars has fairly strong gravity, but next to no atmosphere, so by the time you get moving, atmospheric drag doesn't matter anymore. The moon is a cake-walk, just one good blast and you're in orbit.
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This particular mission didn't even get as far as attempting to land, so that was clearly not the issue.
No landing for them (Score:2)
'propulsion system' makes it sound like all the methane or the LOX leaked away. If that's the case they won't even make it to the moon, much less land there. The thing could wind up as a derelict.
A shame, but at least the launch appears to have been very successful.
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I doubt that Peregrine uses methalox. It's probably a hypergolic like hydrazine.
Again, guys, remember, this is NOT A LAUNCHER ISSUE. It's a payload issue.
QC? (Score:2)
Someone in QC is going to get their ass fired.