This is not a good look for America, lads and ladies.
Astrobotic Technology, the company that developed the first lunar lander to launch from the United States in five decades, said it is abandoning an attempt to put its Peregrine spacecraft on the moon less than 24 hours after the vehicle took flight.
The spacecraft has suffered "critical" propellant loss from a fuel leak, according to the company.
Just hours into the mission, the spacecraft was "unable to place itself in a position facing the sun, likely because of a propulsion issue." This rendered it unable to charge its solar batteries, placing the mission in critical jeopardy.
Lots of Indians out there bragging today now that DEI America seems unable to do what their grandfathers did with computers running Atari.
Technicians were able to find a workaround with the battery problem, but they were "not able to correct the apparent issue with the Peregrine lander's propulsion system."
A "fuel leak is causing the thrusters of Peregrine lander's attitude control system" to "operate well beyond their expected service life cycles to keep the lander from an uncontrollable tumble," the company said.
Astrobotic said it is looking to salvage the trip for any possible scientific endeavors the ship can perform while in space; the craft itself, meanwhile, looks to be a total loss.
That's bad enough. But what's on the ship itself is even more upsetting:
In addition to the NASA science experiments on board the Peregrine lander are cremated human remains and DNA collected by two private companies, Celestis and Elysium Space.
People hoping to memorialize their loved ones or colleagues pay the companies thousands to send a few grams of cremated ashes to the moon in metal capsules.
So the craft has now become effectively a floating columbarium in space. The remains include those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and DNA from Presidents John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Washington (someone donated several strands of his hair).
Maybe sending human remains up to the moon wasn't such a great idea and we shouldn't do it again.
What an embarrassment.
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