How Pittsburgh is leading the U.S. back to the moon 📝 jeffreykluger
t’s not easy to get from North Lincoln Avenue to the Lake of Death. North Lincoln Avenue is in Pittsburgh; the Lake of Death is on the moon—meaning there’s a tidy 385,000 km between them. But before the end of the year, that gap should close—thanks to a modest company in a modest building just a third of a mile northwest of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Heinz Field, tucked humbly between a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s.
Fourteen companies, including giants like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, and Blue Origin have been selected for CLPS contracts, but it is little Astrobotic that is set to be first out of the gate. It is an improbable pick. Never mind SpaceX and its 12,000 employees, or Lockheed Martin with its 114,000. At last count Astrobotic had just 169 workers . But the 15-year-old company is doing a lot with a little.
“We started with the X-Prize, and while nobody ended up winning, it did help us prove our chops,” says John Thornton, Astrobotic CEO. “It gave us the time and the runway to build up our lunar payload delivery side.” Designing and building the spacecraft has been one thing. Actually flying it to the moon will be another matter, and Peregrine’s trip to the lunar surface will be a comparatively patient and poky one. In the Apollo days, astronauts traveled an as-the-crow flies route to the moon, with the powerful upper stage of the Saturn V rocket blasting them out of Earth orbit on a direct moonward trajectory, delivering them to their destination in just three days.
For all of the work the Astrobotic crew is putting into Peregrine, the new spacecraft will not last long on the moon’s surface. Its lifespan is expected to be just two weeks—or one lunar day—before the Lake of Death is plunged into the cold and darkness of the two-week lunar night, during which temperatures plummet to as low as -130°C, , blacking out the spacecraft’s solar panels, freezing its delicate innards, and, in effect, leaving it a derelict bit of once-prized space junk.
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