WASHINGTON — Astrobotic’s first lunar lander has arrived in Florida for final preparations for launch on Christmas Eve.
Astrobotic announced Oct. 31 that the Peregrine lander has arrived at a payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral operated by Astrotech, after shipping last week from Astrobotic’s Pittsburgh headquarters. The lander will undergo preparations for launch on the inaugural Vulcan Centaur flight by United Launch Alliance.
The arrival of Peregrine on the launch site was a milestone years within the making for Astrobotic. “It’s incredible to appreciate that we are only a couple of short weeks away from our Peregrine spacecraft starting its journey to the moon,” said John Thornton, Astrobotic chief executive, in a press release. “After years of dedication and exertions, we’re so near having our moonshot.”
ULA announced Oct. 24 that it set a launch date of Dec. 24 for the primary Vulcan Centaur, with Peregine as the first payload. There are backup launch opportunities on Dec. 25 and 26, and again in January, a schedule ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno said was constrained by requirements akin to lighting conditions at Peregrine’s landing site and communications access.
Peregrine is carrying 21 payloads, including several for NASA through its Business Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Astrobotic received certainly one of the primary CLPS task orders in May 2019, valued at $79.5 million to hold what NASA said on the time was as much as 14 payloads to the moon.
NASA now says it’s going to fly five payloads on Peregrine, including a laser reflectometer and a number of other spectrometers. Several other payloads once manifested on Peregrine were moved to other missions, NASA said, “to take care of performance margins in Peregrine’s descent to the lunar surface.”
Astrobotic’s own manifest of payloads features a sixth from NASA, a navigation Doppler lidar instrument. Non-NASA payloads on Peregrine range from a small lunar rover developed by Carnegie Mellon University to memorial items.
Peregrine will attempt a landing within the Gruithuisen Domes region of the near side of the moon. If successful, Astrobotic plans to operate the lander for as much as 10 days, until nightfall on the landing site.
The mission is now in line to be the primary American business lunar lander mission. Intuitive Machines announced Oct. 27 that its IM-1 lander mission, which was to launch on a Falcon 9 in mid-November, was now delayed to no sooner than Jan. 12. It didn’t disclose the explanation for the delay but previously said that “pad congestion” at Launch Complex 39A could cause it to miss its November launch window.