See the site of the impact where Beresheet crashed into the moon

SpaceIL's Beresheet spacecraft may have not yet passed the last obstacle to landing on the Moon, but it can still contribute to scientific knowledge. An image of the crash site has been captured by a NASA lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LAR) and is being analyzed to obtain information on the lunar soil.

The LRO is an unmanned spacecraft that revolves around the moon at an altitude of between 50 and 200 km. Originally launched to help with tasks such as locating a suitable landing site for moon missions, it now focuses primarily on scientific work such as card collecting. temperature and high resolution images.

The above images were collected by the narrow-angle cameras of the LRO. There are two CNAs on the LRO, which capture panchromatic images at a scale of 0.5 meters over a 5-km (3.1-mile) strip. These are accompanied by a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) that captures images at a scale of 100 meters per pixel in seven color bands over a width of 60 km (37 miles). The data from the two sets of cameras are then transmitted to the Sequence and Compression System (SCS). Together, the NAC, WAC and SCS form the lunar recognition recognition camera that captures detailed images of the moon's surface.

In the case of Beresheet impact images, it is not clear whether the impact created a crater in the surface or not. "On the scale of the NAC image, we can not detect a crater; there may be one, but it's just too small to be seen, "said Dr. Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in a statement. Alternatively, he said, the craft could have hit the surface at a low angle, which would have produced a gouge rather than a crater. Or perhaps because the craft was so small and fragile and did not travel at very high speed, it disintegrated under impact and did not produce a crater.

Even though the Beresheet landing has not been successful, it could still give scientists valuable insights into the lunar environment. It is classified as a low-impact event, like two previous spacecraft that affected the Moon: GRAIL, impacted in 2012, and LADEE, impacted in 2014. These events can help scientists understand how the ground Lunar, or regolith, evolves in time.