Manager Chris Culbert News Today

America returned to the Moon on Thursday with the Intuitive Machines Odysseus lander touching down near the unexplored region of the lunar South Pole.

In the latest update from Astrobotic, the company said the Peregrine lander seems to be heading back toward Earth and will likely burn up in the atmosphere. As of Saturday, Peregrine had made it 242,000 miles from Earth but has been leaking propellant for days.

The Peregrine spacecraft mission has experienced an anomaly after a successful launch that stopped the vehicle from pointing its solar array at the sun. This is putting the planned moon landing in danger.

Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander is scheduled to launch on January 8 atop United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. The mission is the first of those contracted under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

NASA is heading back to the Moon as soon as this Monday, but this time the agency is flying commercial with Astrobotic's lunar lander, a Pittsburgh-based company aiming to become the first private business to successfully land on the Moon.