Former SpaceX engineers explain how the US's first moon landing mission in decades may have gone wrong and how to prevent similar anomaliesBusiness Insider by Jenny McGrath Jan 11, 2024
• Space company Astrobotic's lunar lander won't reach the moon after a fuel leak.
• Two former SpaceX employees explained how to prevent and troubleshoot anomalies during missions.
• Most space companies don't operate like SpaceX does, they said, which can lead to mistakes.
Astrobotic's lunar lander Peregrine won't make it to the moon following a fuel leak. The NASA-backed mission was meant to be the first time a private company's spacecraft landed on the moon.
Astrobotic, which built Peregrine, theorized that a valve connecting two tanks failed. Pressurized helium leaked into an oxidizer tank, which burst. Though it won't reach the moon, the lander continues to collect data while it still has power.
This is far from the first time a private space company has experienced an anomaly.
Two former SpaceX engineers told Business Insider that space companies that invest heavily in testing and robust software processes tend to be successful and learn from their failures.
Karthik Gollapudi is a cofounder of Sift, a startup that helps space companies analyze their data and automate tasks, and Jason Hunter is its lead mission manager.
While Gollapudi and Hunter don't know how Astrobotic tests its vehicles, Gollapudi said the reason he started Sift was because of issues he saw across the space industry.
Companies would build and test the propulsion, solar array, and other systems separately, then test them all together when the vehicle was fully assembled. "And sometimes you run into mistakes doing that," he said.
More:
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-astrobotic-peregrine-anomaly-sift-error-software-testing-2024-1