• AutoTL;DRB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    411 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    After lift-off on Monday, the Peregrine Mission One (PM1) – which carries a piece of technology developed by UK scientists – experienced an “anomaly” that would have prevented the lander from achieving a stable position pointing towards the sun, according to Astrobotic, the US firm behind the project.

    It is the first mission to fly under Nasa’s commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) initiative, a scheme in which the space agency pays private companies to deliver scientific equipment to the moon.

    Its instruments are intended to measure radiation levels, surface and subsurface water ice, the magnetic field, and the extremely tenuous layer of gas called the exosphere.

    More controversially, the lander contains non-scientific payloads, including a physical coin “loaded with one bitcoin” and a Japanese “lunar dream capsule” that contains 185,872 messages from children from around the world.

    Vulcan has spent roughly a decade in development to replace ULA’s workhorse Atlas V rocket and to rival the reusable Falcon 9 from Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the satellite launch market.

    As well as the lunar lander, the mission is also delivering a memorial payload into space containing the remains and DNA of several people associated with the Star Trek television franchise, including the actors James Doohan, DeForest Kelley and Nichelle Nichols.


    The original article contains 712 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @[email protected]OP
    link
    fedilink
    -2411 months ago

    American lunar capabilities have atrophied while India and China are speeding ahead. The last controlled American moon landing (crewed or uncrewed) was Apollo 17. In 1972.

    And people believe that Artemis 3 will happen next year

    • @Candelestine
      link
      English
      2811 months ago

      Atrophied…? It’s a private company that NASA helped fund to help develop their own, independent capabilities. The private sector is always less careful, this should not be surprising.

      There’s a whole different private American company launching their own attempt next month or something.

      There’s more lenses to look through asides the lens of nationalism.

      • @[email protected]OP
        link
        fedilink
        -2711 months ago

        A government-funded project, carrying a government-funded payload, launched by a government-funded rocket.

        bUt ItS pRiVaTe

        • athos77
          link
          fedilink
          1811 months ago

          So by that logic, if the government charters a bus to carry some government scientists and their government-funded research projects to a conference that the government has partially funded, and the bus crashes on the way to the conference, then the government is responsible for the bad brakes on the bus? How does that make sense?

          • Rentlar
            link
            fedilink
            310 months ago

            The government has given at least one direct or indirect subsidy to OP, so therefore anything OP does wrong can be blamed on the government! Hooray!

            • SanguinePar
              link
              711 months ago

              In that scenario, the road was fine, it was the brakes that were broken :-)

        • @Candelestine
          link
          English
          811 months ago

          Put some in front of each of those for actual accuracy. NASA does have projects it exclusively funds and controls.

          Those are not without failure either, of course, the Challenger disaster being a classic example. Details are important, at any rate.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          111 months ago

          More whaling for capital. “Won’t someone think of the shareholders!”

          The part that broke was built by a private company that took taxpayer dollars soo…. Seems like the free market is what failed here

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      3
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      This isn’t NASA, it’s a private company completely unrelated in anyway to the Artemis projects success chances. NASA meanwhile, has a great track record for landing stuff on mars, which is much harder

      That being said, no one who is actually following the Artemis project believes Artemis 3 will happen next year, we all know 2026 is the earliest it’ll be at this point.

      ETA: Annnddd it’s official, Artemis 2 delayed to 2025, Artemis 3 delayed to 2026.