Astrobotic's Peregrine launches to the Moon

Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander launches on United Alliance's Vulcan rocket.

The Peregrine lunar lander launched towards the Moon on 8 January at 07:18 GMT on the inaugural flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. Around 50 minutes after the launch and 500 km above the Earth’s surface, Peregrine separated from the rocket and powered on. Initially, the mission planned for the lander to touchdown on the lunar surface on 23 February, delivering scientific instruments to the Gruithuisen Domes region near the north pole of the Moon. These instruments included the Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS) of which ESA’s Exospheric Mass Spectrometer (EMS) is the heart. PITMS was designed to sniff the Moon’s tenuous atmosphere to chart its chemical composition.