Israeli spacecraft crashes onto moon after technical failures

By Ari Rabinovitch

 

An image taken by Israel spacecraft, Beresheet, upon its landing on the moon, obtained by Reuters from Space IL on April 11, 2019. Courtesy Space IL/Handout via REUTERS

 

YEHUD, Israel (Reuters) - Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed onto the moon on Thursday after a series of technical failures during its final descent, shattering hopes of a historic controlled landing on the lunar surface.

 

The unmanned robotic lander suffered periodic engine and communications failures during the landing sequence, which lasted around 21 minutes, the support team said.

 

Beresheet, whose name is Hebrew for the biblical phrase 'In the beginning', had travelled through space for seven weeks in a series of expanding orbits around Earth before crossing into the moon's gravity last week.

 

The final manoeuvre on Wednesday brought it into a tight elliptical orbit around the moon, around 15 km (9 miles) from the surface at its closest. From there it was a short, nail-biting and ultimately disappointing conclusion.

 

"It seems that a failure in our inertial measurements unit caused a chain of events in the spacecraft avionics which cut off the engines and caused us to lose the mission," said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

 

So far, only three nations have succeeded in carrying out a "soft", or controlled, landing on the lunar surface: the United States, the Soviet Union and China.

 

Beresheet would have been the first craft to land on the moon that was not the product of a government programme. It was built by state-owned IAI and Israeli non-profit space venture SpaceIL with $100 million funded almost entirely by private donors.

 

Still, the spacecraft achieved some milestones.

 

"It is by far the smallest, the cheapest spacecraft ever to get to the moon," said Doron. "It's been an amazing journey, I hope we get a chance for another one."

 

Shaped like a round table with four carbon-fibre legs, Beresheet stood about 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) tall. It blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Feb. 21 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and entered Earth's orbit about 34 minutes after launch.

 

Its circuitous flight path was around 4 million miles (6.5 million km). A direct route from the Earth to the moon covers roughly 240,000 miles (386,000 km).

 

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch, Editing by Kevin Liffey and Rosalba O'Brien)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-04-12

Sad but try again!!you will succeed!!

No mention of this fact when the probe was launched short time ago, no mention of the fact that the prob successfully entered the moon's orbit and thus becoming only the 7th country in the world to do so, it is an item now because it crushed landed, had it successfully landed, i doubt it very much if there would be a mention of longer than 2 paragraphs...

Off topic trolling posts and replies have been removed. 

2 hours ago, ezzra said:

No mention of this fact when the probe was launched short time ago, no mention of the fact that the prob successfully entered the moon's orbit and thus becoming only the 7th country in the world to do so, it is an item now because it crushed landed, had it successfully landed, i doubt it very much if there would be a mention of longer than 2 paragraphs...

 

Your post contains no mention of how much media coverage there was of China landing on the far side of the moon.  I think that embarrasses your whole 'the media reports only bad things' hypothesis.

Should have gone for something other than that deep space discount Boeing Max technology! 

The dubious honor of being the first country to litter the moon????

So having made the Earth just one huge metal scrap heap, we will do the same to the moon. There is no end the man's stupidity. Watch this space in 200 years time. I will update....

Edited April 12, 20197 yr by Rod the Sod

3 hours ago, mania said:

The dubious honor of being the first country to litter the moon????

Yep - should be told to go and pick up their litter... ????

3 hours ago, mania said:

The dubious honor of being the first country to litter the moon????

Sadly not the first, everything is still exactly where it was left... ????????

Not brake failure then

4 hours ago, mania said:

The dubious honor of being the first country to litter the moon????

I think the Americans were the first to litter the Moon.

3 minutes ago, sandy4589 said:

Not brake failure then

Retro Rockets...

6 hours ago, mania said:

The dubious honor of being the first country to litter the moon????

Time to learn to search with Gogle first:  the Soviet Union performed the first hard (unpowered) Moon landing later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4 , see  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing  

On 4/12/2019 at 6:41 AM, webfact said:

the cheapest spacecraft ever to get to the moon," said Doron.

It's always about the money

On 4/11/2019 at 11:41 PM, webfact said:

Beresheet would have been the first craft to land on the moon that was not the product of a government programme. It was built by state-owned IAI and Israeli non-profit space venture SpaceIL with $100 million funded almost entirely by private donors.

could build and get launched a small sat for lot less than £1 million, even get one into Lunar orbit without much trouble, the big problem is to get it down onto the moon's surface as the moon has no atmosphere so can not parachute or fly down.