While Astrobotic’s initial comments about what went wrong were less than specific, there have been several updates in the hours since. It now seems like the team is starting to get an idea of what went wrong.
The second update after Astrobotic’s original statement indicated that the lack of proper orientation was caused by a “propulsion system anomaly.” On top of this, it also raised concerns that the craft’s battery was reaching low operational levels. The team performed a maneuver to reorient the solar panels toward the sun, but the Peregrine was due to enter a region known for communication outages, so it wouldn’t know if the maneuver worked until it reached the other side.
The third update claimed that Astrobotic successfully re-established communications after the blackout and that the battery was indeed being re-charged. The team was planning to continue to evaluate the source of the problem, but a fourth update came with bad news. It stated that the failure within the propulsion system caused a “critical loss of propellant” and that the team was working to stabilize the loss, but implied that the mission itself would not be able to go forward as planned. The post noted that Astrobotic’s engineers were now focusing on gathering as much scientific data as possible.