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On April 11, Israel's space shuttle Beresheet crashed on the moon after encountering difficulties during its landing process.
Eleven days later, NASA's lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO) photographed the site of the impact.
The LRO camera (LROC) took the photo at a distance of 90 km above the lunar surface, capturing a dark spot about 10 meters wide, considered the collision point.
However, it is unclear whether the spacecraft formed a crater on the surface or was simply spoiled.
"It's possible that the crater is too small to appear on the photos," according to NASA. "Another possibility is that Beresheet formed a small recess instead of a crater, given its low angle of approach, its light weight (compared to a dense meteoroid of the same size) and its low speed ( still Beresheet's speed was still higher than most speed balls). "
The LRO, which has been studying the moon from its orbit for a decade, passes over every part of Earth's satellite twice a month, once during the lunar night and once during the lunar day.
His camera is made up of three imagers: a seven-color wide-angle camera (WAC) and two narrow-angle black-and-white cameras (NAC). A CNA captured the photo of the Beresheet impact.
Left: Beresheet impact site. Right: processed image to highlight changes near the landing site among photos taken before and after landing, revealing a white halo (via NASA / GSFC / Arizona State University)
This mysterious luminous halo around "smearing", as the agency called it, could be the result of the gases associated with the crash.
Or, it could have formed from fine particles of soil blown during the descent of the spacecraft, smoothing the dust around the landing site and making it very reflective.
"There are many clues that we are looking at an artificial crater instead of a crater caused by a meteoroid," NASA revealed. "This is an important consideration because the moon, having no atmosphere, is constantly bombarded by space rocks leaving craters."
LROC could take more images of the landing site when it returns to the same area on May 19.
Despite this major hiccup, SpaceIL's mission Beresheet has managed to take amazing pictures of the dark side of the moon and has moved to lunar orbit, making Israel the seventh country to encircle the Moon successfully.
SpaceIL operator has not finished yet, though.
The non-profit organization recently announced the development of Beresheet 2.0, a "new halalit, " according to the entrepreneur, Morris Kahn.
"We will place him on the moon and finish the mission," he said in a video statement posted on Twitter last month.
No other project updates have been released. But you can follow SpaceIL on social networks for more information on Israel's second mission attempt on the moon.
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