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Japanese robot lands on the moon but faces power drain

Illustration: SLIM lander on moon
An artist's conception shows Japan's SLIM lander on the moon. (ISAS / JAXA Illustration)

Update for Jan. 21: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said it shut down its moon lander to conserve battery power, but added that the lander might be recharged and revived if sunlight hits the spacecraft’s solar cells at the right angle.

Japan has become the fifth nation to land a functioning robot on the moon, but the mission could fall short of complete success due to a problem with the lander’s power-generating solar cells.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, was launched along with an X-ray space telescope called XRISM from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in early September — and after weeks of in-space maneuvers, SLIM touched down today at 1520 GMT (7:20 a.m. PT Jan. 19, or 12:20 a.m. JST Jan. 20).

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency reported that the landing was successful. During a news briefing, Hiroshi Kuninaka, director general of JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said the achievement marked “a major milestone” in Japan’s effort to send spacecraft to the moon, and eventually to Mars.

Kuninaka said SLIM was able to communicate with Earth and respond to commands. “However, it seems that the solar cells are not generating electricity at this point in time,” he said. “And since we are not able to generate electricity, the operation is being done using batteries alone.”

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Lander falls back to Earth after missing out on the moon

View of crescent Earth from Astrobotic Peregrine lander in space
One of the last pictures taken by a camera on the Peregrine lander shows a crescent Earth. (Astrobotic Photo)

Ten days after its launch, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander fell back to Earth, ending a trip to the moon’s orbital distance and back that was doomed by a propellant leak.

The mission began auspiciously on the night of Jan. 7-8 with a seemingly successful liftoff from Florida on United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan Centaur rocket, powered by Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines. But hours after launch, the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic team detected a problem with the propulsion system. So much propellant was lost that the team had to rule out a moon landing.

After days of troubleshooting, Astrobotic and NASA determined that the best course was to send the 8-foot-wide robotic spacecraft on a looping orbit that went out more than 240,000 miles from Earth — and then came back for a controlled atmospheric re-entry over a remote area of the South Pacific.

Astrobotic said telemetry received during Peregrine’s descent suggested that the spacecraft broke up during re-entry at 1:04 p.m. PT Jan. 18.

Today, Space-Track.org said the U.S. Space Command confirmed the spacecraft’s re-entry. “That’s certainly good to hear,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told reporters during a news briefing.

“Peregrine Mission One has concluded,” Astrobotic said in a final mission update. “We look to the future and our next mission to the moon, Griffin Mission One. All of the hard-earned experience from the past 10 days in space, along with the preceding years of designing, building and testing Peregrine, will directly inform Griffin and our future missions.”

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GeekWire

PowerLight looks into beaming power on the moon

Illustration: Power-beaming system on the moon
An artist’s conception shows a beamed-power system operating on the moon. (Illustration via PowerLight)

Kent, Wash.-based PowerLight Technologies says it’s joined a team headed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to design a power beaming system that might someday charge up robots on the moon.

The effort is being funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of its LunA-10 program, which supports concepts for future lunar infrastructure projects. DARPA selected 14 industry teams, including Blue Origin’s team, to receive up to $1 million each for studies that are due this spring.

Blue Origin and PowerLight are focusing on a system that could generate power for lunar operations — perhaps using solar cells manufactured on the moon — and then transmit that power to remote locations via laser light.

The DARPA LunA-10 study takes its name from the goal of advancing a lunar architecture for infrastructure over a 10-year time frame. Hardware development isn’t the point of the study. Instead, DARPA is interested in developing ideas that could give rise to future commercial applications on the moon — and perhaps tech spin-offs here on Earth.

PowerLight, which was known as LaserMotive when it was founded in 2007, is developing laser-based power transmission systems for a variety of closer-to-home applications, including over-the-air power beaming systems as well as power over fiber-optic cable for telecom equipment, drones and hard-to-reach installations on land and underwater.

The company made an early splash in 2009 when it won a $900,000 prize in NASA’s Power Beaming Challenge, so its involvement in a space-related project marks something of a return to its roots.

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Cosmic Space

NASA reschedules Artemis moon landing for 2026

Artemis 2 looking at Orion moon ship
Artemis 2 crew members check out their Orion spacecraft during testing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA Photo / Kim Shiflett)

NASA has added another year’s delay to its plan for landing astronauts on the moon: The Artemis 2 trip around the moon is now scheduled for 2025, setting the stage for an Artemis 3 mission in 2026 that would see humans step onto lunar surface for the first time in 54 years.

The reasons behind the postponement have to do with safety concerns that arose in the wake of the uncrewed Artemis 1 round-the-moon mission in 2022. That flight was seen as a shakedown cruise for NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft.

When NASA and its industry partners analyzed the results of Artemis 1, they found several issues that required more time to resolve — including higher-than-expected levels of erosion in Orion’s heat shield, deficiencies in the battery and electrical system, and problems with some of the components used in Orion’s life support system.

“Safety is our top priority,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said today in a teleconference. “And to give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges with first-time developments, operations and integration, we’re going to give more time on Artemis 2 and 3.”

Artemis 2 is now due to send three Americans and a Canadian astronaut on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule in September 2025 rather than late 2024.

The Artemis 3 mission, which would use Orion as well as a modified SpaceX Starship lander to put a yet-to-be-named crew of astronauts on the moon’s surface near the south pole, is now scheduled for September 2026 rather than late 2025.

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Astrobotic admits moon lander mission will fall short

Peregrine lander during preparations for launch
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander is shown during last month’s preparations for launch. (United Launch Alliance Photo)

Astrobotic says that it’s given up on its plan to put a commercial spacecraft safely on the moon’s surface, due to a propellant leak that will soon leave its Peregrine lander without fuel.

The Pittsburgh-based company said there was no indication that the leak occurred as the result of the lander’s launch by United Launch Alliance. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket made its first liftoff over the weekend with the aid of BE-4 engines provided by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

The Astrobotic team’s working theory is that a valve between the propulsion system’s oxidizer and a store of helium that served to pressurize the oxidizer tank failed to reseal after it was actuated during spacecraft initialization.

“This led to a rush of high-pressure helium that spiked the pressure in the oxidizer tank beyond its operating limit and subsequently ruptured the tank,” Astrobotic said today in mission update.

Because of the resulting leak, mission controllers had a hard time keeping Peregrine’s solar arrays pointed toward the sun — but today Astrobotic said “the team was able to update the control algorithm and fix this issue.” The lander’s batteries are currently fully charged, and onboard cameras are sending pictures back down to Earth.

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GeekWire

Propulsion failure puts moon lander’s mission at risk

Illustration: Peregrine lander in space with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander with Earth in the background. (Astrobotic via YouTube)

Hours after the launch of its commercial moon lander, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic reported a failure within the robotic spacecraft’s propulsion system that could rule out a soft landing.

“Unfortunately, it appears the failure within the propulsion system is causing a critical loss of propellant,” Astrobotic said today in a mission update.posted to X / Twitter. “The team is working to try and stabilize this loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture. We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”

In an earlier update, Astrobotic said the propulsion problem could threaten the “ability to soft land on the moon.” NASA is paying Astrobotic $108 million to have its Peregrine spacecraft carry a suite of science instruments to the lunar surface, and more than a dozen other payloads are going along for the ride.

The setback followed a picture-perfect launch of the 8-foot-wide lander from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida overnight. It was the first liftoff for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket — and the first launch for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines, which Jeff Bezos’ space venture provided for the first-stage booster.

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GeekWire

Moon lander gets a lift from Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin

Vulcan liftoff from launch pad
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad. (NASA via YouTube)

Update: Hours after launch, Astrobotic reported a failure in the Peregrine lander’s propulsion system that could rule out a soft landing on the moon.

United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket lifted off for the first time tonight, making use of booster engines built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to launch what could be the first mission to put a commercially built lander safely on the moon.

At the end of a seemingly trouble-free countdown, the rocket rose from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Jan. 8 (11:18 p.m. PT Jan. 7). It was the first-ever launch for the Vulcan rocket, and the first-ever use of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines.

Two BE-4 engines, fueled by liquefied natural gas, powered the first-stage booster spaceward with an assist from two side boosters. “We’re seeing excellent performance out of the BE-4’s,” ULA flight commentator Rob Gannon said.

About five minutes after liftoff, Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage separated from the first-stage booster and carried Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander into orbit. Spacecraft separation took place 50 minutes after launch, sending Peregrine on the next leg of its trek to the moon.

“Yee-haw! I am so thrilled,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said after separation. Soon after Bruno’s joyful whoop, Astrobotic confirmed contact with the lander.

“Big kudos and congrats to the whole team!” Bezos said in an Instagram post.

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Moon lander mission will carry DNA to the final frontier

Astrobotic moon lander prepared for launch
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander is prepared for placement within its launch vehicle’s fairing. (Astrobotic Photo)

A mission to send a commercial lander to the moon, set for launch in a couple of days, will bring the fruition of projects that have been in the works for years — including projects that aim to put DNA into cold storage on the final frontier.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s robotic Peregrine lander is scheduled to begin a circuitous 40-day trip to the moon with liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Jan. 8 (11:18 p.m. PT Jan. 7). NASA TV will stream coverage of the countdown.

It’ll mark the first launch for United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket, and the first use of the BE-4 engines built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture for Vulcan’s first-stage booster — coming nearly 10 years after the partnership between ULA and Blue Origin was announced.

A successful touchdown next month would go into the history books as the first soft landing of a commercially built spacecraft on the lunar surface — in fact, the first soft lunar landing of any U.S.-built spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972. Among the payloads placed aboard the lander is the Iris mini-rover, which would become the first U.S.-built vehicle to wheel around the moon since the Apollo era.

Several NASA-supported payloads will take measurements at the landing site, around a region known as the Gruithuisen Domes, during a science mission that’s projected to last a couple of weeks. Other payloads include micro-robots from Mexico, an art project called MoonArk, mementos and bits of cryptocurrency.

And then there’s the DNA. Samples of DNA — either contributed by donors or synthesized to contain coded information — will be riding on the Peregrine lander as well as the Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage.

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Fiction Science Club

Get a reality check on plans to build cities in space

A scene from "For All Mankind" shows a fictional Martian city from above. (Credit: Sony Pictures / Apple TV+)

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos may harbor multibillion-dollar dreams of sending millions of people to live on Mars, on the moon and inside free-flying space habitats — but a newly published book provides a prudent piece of advice: Don’t go too boldly.

It’s advice that Kelly and Zach Weinersmith didn’t expect they’d be giving when they began to work on their book, titled “A City on Mars.” They thought they’d be writing a guide to the golden age of space settlement that Musk and Bezos were promising.

“We ended up doing a ton of research on space settlements from just every angle you can imagine,” Zach Weinersmith says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “This was a four-year research project. And about two and a half years in, we went from being fairly optimistic about it as a desirable, near-term likely possibility [to] probably unlikely in the near term, and possibly undesirable in the near term. So it was quite a change. Slightly traumatic, I would say.”

The Weinersmiths found that there was precious little research into the potential long-term health effects of living on the moon or Mars — and zero research into the potential effects on human reproduction and development. Moreover, the legal uncertainties surrounding property rights in space seemed likely to lead to disputes that would tie diplomats and military planners in knots.

“In our effort to create Mars settlements to make a Plan B, to make ourselves safer as a species, are we actually lowering existential risk?” Zach says. “I think it’s absolutely unclear — and there’s a good argument that we might even increase it.”

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Blue Origin’s chief architect lifts the veil on moon startup

Gary Lai at Museum of Flight
Blue Origin chief architect Gary Lai speaks at the Pathfinder Awards banquet at the Museum of Flight. (Photo by Ted Huetter / Museum of Flight)

Gary Lai’s resume features his status as chief architect and pioneer spaceflier at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture — but when he received a Pathfinder Award this weekend at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, the veteran engineer highlighted a lesser-known job, as co-founder and chief technology officer of a moon-centric startup that’s still in stealth mode.

“We aim to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the moon to use here on Earth,” Lai told an audience of about 400 banquet-goers on Oct. 28. “We’re building a completely novel approach to extract those resources, efficiently, cost-effectively and also responsibly. The goal is really to create a sustainable in-space economy.”

The Tacoma, Wash.-based startup, called Interlune, has actually been around for about three years — but it’s been shrouded in secrecy long enough that Lai can still be considered a co-founder. Lai said the other founders include Rob Meyerson, who was Blue Origin’s president from 2003 to 2018; and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, a geologist who set foot on the moon in 1972 and served in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 1983.

Lai noted that Interlune recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation. That $246,000 grant supports efforts to develop a system that could sort out moon dirt by particle size.

Neither Lai nor Meyerson, who was in the audience cheering him on, was willing to say much more about Interlune, due to the fact that the venture is still in stealth. But a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that the venture raised $1.85 million in seed funding last year from five unnamed investors.

The SEC form also names longtime aerospace industry executive Indra Hornsby as an officer of the company, and lists Estes Park, Colo., as Interlune’s headquarters. However, Hornsby’s LinkedIn page says she’s currently an adviser and a former chief operating officer. Other documents indicate that Tacoma, Meyerson’s home base, has become Interlune’s HQ.

Lai said that he would continue to advise Blue Origin on a part-time basis, focusing on advanced concepts that include the Blue Moon lunar landing system. But going forward, Lai plans to give more attention to what humans will be doing on the moon after they land.

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