PITMS completing testing at STFC RAL Space before being shipped to NASA. Credit: Open University, STFC RAL Space, NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre.
After an eventful ten-day trip to space, the Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS) has returned to Earth. Originally destined for the moon, the mission encountered a propellant leak on its lander forcing its return.
Developed by RAL Space, the Open University, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the PITMS was sent to the moon to determine its atmospheric composition. Despite the mission-critical flaw forcing the lander back to Earth, the team considered the mission a success after achieving a majority of their goals including turning the instrument on to demonstrate its functionality.
"We were able to power on our instrument and checked everything was functioning as it should," said Roland Trautner, project manager for PITMS at the European Space Agency (ESA). "We were very happy to see that the data confirmed our instrument is in good health, that it survived the launch and harsh conditions of space, and that the instrument could provide clean data. We developed the spectrometer using a novel fast-track project management approach, delivering the payload in less than two years, which is twice as fast as typical payload development programs. We defined our success criteria such that what we have now achieved—delivering our instrument to NASA and the successful checkout of the instrument in orbit—constitutes 90% of our project's success."
"The success of EMS is also a testament of the good collaboration between the space agencies, industry and academia,” added Christopher Howe, Production and Software Group Leader at RAL Space. "The short development time would not have been possible without an efficient and trustful working relationship between those entities."
The technology developed for PITMS will be used on future space missions, including a launch scheduled for 2028.