DESCRIPTION |
The NASA payload suite on Astrobotic Peregrine Mission 1 was slated to provide some of the first
measurements from the surface of the Moon since Apollo. The spacecraft was targeting a landing
within Sinus Viscositatis in order to provide complementary and meaningful data to NASA?s Lunar-VISE
instrument suite, which will land on the nearby Gruithuisen Domes in 2026.
The NASA payloads aboard Astrobotic Peregrine 1 were focusing on characterizing the radiation
environment in space and on the surface, volatiles present on or near the surface, and surface
temperatures and mineralogy. The payload also included the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) which
could have enabled precise laser ranging from orbiting spacecraft. Because the Peregrine spacecraft
never landed on the Moon, all of the data acquired during the mission occurred in cislunar space.
This allowed for measurements of the radiation environment experienced by the spacecraft during the
mission as well as measurements of volatiles released by the spacecraft during operations and as a
result of the anomaly experienced in the propulsion system. Except for the LRA, all other NASA payloads
were powered on at various points and collected science data.
|