Despite a highly publicized successful launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral, the Peregrine Mission One sprung a fatal fuel leak on its way to the moon.
The first U.S. effort to land on the moon in more than 50 years is now lost in space, officials said.
The lunar spacecraft, dubbed Peregrine, launched Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral with great fanfare. The commercial vessel, owned by Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic, carried impressive payloads including $108 million in NASA equipment, including a radiation detector and several spectrometers, one designed to forage for water.
Seven hours after blastoff, the mission was in trouble.
The rocket also carried modules from space burial company Celestis that contained DNA and cremated remains of former presidents including George Washington and John F. Kennedy, as well as those of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, actors Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan.
That payload, named "Enterprise," successfully separated from the Peregrine rocket 50 minutes after launch and is headed for its intended, eternal orbit around the sun, Celestis spokeswoman Pazia Schonfeld told Inside Edition Digital.
But the module dubbed "Traquility," which held remains of everyday folk who paid handsomely to spend eternity on the moon, remain on Peregrine, which is now bouncing around space. Astrobiotic announced Tuesday that the mission had been aborted after several attempts to right the off-course vessel.
Its problems began when the spacecraft failed to align properly with the sun, so its solar batteries could charge, the company said. Engineers were able to correct that trajectory, but trouble with a propulsion system resulted in a "critical" fuel leak that left the craft with not enough power to reach the moon.
The lunar vehicle had been scheduled to touch the moon's surface on Feb. 23
“Each success and setback are opportunities to learn and grow," said NASA’s Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, in a statement Monday.
"We will use this lesson to propel our efforts to advance science, exploration and commercial development of the moon," Kearns said.
As for the human remains still onboard Peregrine spacecraft, Celestis will send a second batch to the moon at a later time, the company spokeswoman said.
Celestis "has a performance guarantee that provides a no-cost reflight for our clients in the event the mission does not reach the intended destination," the spokeswoman told Inside Edition Digital. "For this reason, we already have collected sufficient flight samples to do so."
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