NASA changes landing site for Peregrine lunar lander - SpaceNews

NASA announced Feb. 2 the Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission, flying payloads for the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and other customers, will now attempt a landing near a region called the Gruithuisen Domes on the northeast edge of Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, on the western part of the moon’s near side.

That was the landing location identified when NASA awarded one of the first CLPS task orders to Astrobotic for the mission in May 2019.

NASA is planning to send an instrument suite called Lunar-VISE to the Gruithuisen Domes on a future CLPS mission to study that region to understand why they appear to be rich in silica.

Sending Peregrine to a region near the Gruithuisen Domes, NASA stated, “will present complementary and meaningful data to Lunar-VISE without introducing additional risk to the lander.”

Astrobotic said Jan. 25 it had completed testing of the lander and was awaiting the “green light” from ULA to ship the spacecraft to Cape Canaveral for pre-launch processing.

The rocket itself arrived at Cape Canaveral last month and ULA is preparing it for tests leading up to the launch.