Peregrine Lunar Lander
Mission Status
LegacyOverview
A lunar lander mission, the Peregrine Mission-1 was a lander built by Astrobiotic Technology, and carried payloads as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). On board was the Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS) instrument, designed to measure lunar gases. Due to a propulsion system anomaly on the Peregrine lander, the mission did not reach the Moon. However, PITMS sucessfully operated in space, collecting data before Earth re-entry.RAL Space involvement
RAL Space, as part of a team led by the OU, was responsible for the overall mechanical, thermal, software, and electronic design of the Exospheric Mass Spectrometer, a key element of the PITMS instrument.
Instrument Highlight
PITMS
The Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), was developed in collaboration with STFC RAL Space, The Open University (OU) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA GSFC), funded through UK Space Agency and European Space Agency. The instrument aimed to determine the composition of trace gases in the exosphere, as well as look for water and other volatile compounds that could prove vital for establishing crewed bases on the Moon. The Exospheric Mass Spectrometer component was developed by The Open University and RAL Space, and had direct heritage from the Ptolemy mass spectrometer which was used as part of the Rosetta Philae Lander mission. The EMS consisted of an ion trap mass analyser mounter above a set of printed circuit boards. The EMS was developed rapidly over a period of ∼16 months, with no qualification or engineering unit development, resulting in a single Proto-Flight Model.
