Mission Summary
Peregrine Mission 1 was the first American spacecraft sent to land on the Moon since the Apollo era, and the first flight of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which pays private companies to carry science to the surface. Built by the Pittsburgh company Astrobotic, it launched on January 8, 2024 on the maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket.
The mission unraveled within hours. Soon after separating from the rocket, Peregrine suffered a propellant leak that made a soft landing impossible and left it struggling to keep its solar panels pointed at the Sun. Astrobotic and NASA kept the spacecraft operating and collecting data for as long as they could, but the leak had ended any chance of reaching the surface.
Rather than leave the crippled lander adrift, controllers guided Peregrine back toward Earth, and it burned up over the South Pacific on January 18, 2024 after more than ten days in space. Though it never reached the Moon, the flight returned data from its NASA instruments and opened the commercial lunar program.
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