Canberra dishes listen for last gasp of Peregrine’s failed moon mission

Nasa’s Canberra Deep Space complex is part of a global network communicating with the Peregrine 1, which has no chance of landing on the moon

Thousands of kilometres from the Earth, the doomed Peregrine mission to the moon is speaking its last words back home – and it may be an Australian deep space outpost that records its final message.

On Tuesday Astrobotic, the US company behind the mission, revealed there was “no chance” that Peregrine 1 would fulfil its aim to be the first commercial space probe to make a soft landing on the moon. A critical fuel leak after Monday’s liftoff meant the probe would run out of propellant long before its planned 23 February touchdown in the Bay of Stickiness.