[ad_1]
Can an Israeli non-profit organization land on the moon with a $ 100 million reserve? Tune in tonight to know if it can take off.
Until now, only three countries – the United States, the former Soviet Union and China – have sent robotic undercarriages to the moon. Starting in 2007, a competition organized by the X Prize Foundation and funded by Google was supposed to encourage entrepreneurs to send a privately financed spacecraft to the country, but the contest deadline was exceeded without anyone winning the grand prize. price of $ 20 million.
SpaceIL, based in Israel, was one of the finalists and continued its efforts even though there was no money to be won. His spaceship is now on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in Florida.
[[[[Sign up to receive reminders of space and astronomical events on your calendar..]
When is the launch and how can I watch it?
The launch is scheduled for Thursday at 20:45. According to the forecasters, there was an 80% chance that the weather would be good, and the sky about an hour before the launch was clear. SpaceX will broadcast the launch. Videos from SpaceIL's control room in Israel will be broadcast live on the organization's Facebook page.
When will Beresheet land on the moon?
The landing should take place in April.
Why will it take so long to get there?
The spaceship takes a long but fuel-efficient route. Instead of coming out of Earth's orbit, it will gradually extend its elliptical orbit until it passes close enough to the moon to be captured by lunar gravity. It will then spend a few more days to make its orbit around the moon more circular before attempting a landing.
What will the Beresheet spacecraft do on the moon?
One of the instruments developed by the Weizmann Institute of Science is to measure the magnetic field of the moon as it approaches the spacecraft that must land. This information could reveal something about the iron core far below the surface.
NASA provided the spacecraft with retroreflectors: essentially mirrors reflecting light in the same direction as the incoming beam. The lasers on Earth that shine at this location will bounce back, allowing a precise measurement of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Apollo astronauts left similar devices on the moon almost 50 years ago.
The spacecraft is also a time capsule containing hundreds of digital files, including the Torah, the Israeli flag, public works and a children's book inspired by SpaceIL's mission on the Moon. It will also carry digital archives containing 30 million pages of information – including a full version of the Wikipedia encyclopedia in English – provided by the Arch Mission Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to create a backup of knowledge of humanity.
How long will the mission take?
Not long. Beresheet is not designed to work for more than a few days. He will land at the beginning of a lunar day. Electronic components are not designed to survive the warmer temperatures on the moon's surface when the sun rises in the moon's sky.
Will the mission succeed?
The traditional and more expensive approach to spacecraft design is to use components that have already successfully flown and to include backups for critical systems. SpaceIL has left out much of the redundancy and has tried to take a more agile approach to saving money.
The engineers at SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, the large aerospace company that collaborated on the construction of Beresheet, said the mission was riskier, but that they had made thoughtful decisions about shortcuts to to follow.
Beresheet will he jump?
To win the $ 20 million Google Lunar X Prize, the satellite had to travel 500 meters on the lunar surface. To do this, the SpaceIL engineers had planned to take off Beresheet after landing and make him travel the required distance.
As there is more than 20 million dollars to win, Beresheet could well stay in place. "A million things can go wrong," said Yonatan Winetraub, one of the founders of SpaceIL. "He could rock and explode."
The SpaceIL team will make a final decision after the April landing.
What other spaceships are launched with Beresheet aboard the SpaceX rocket?
Beresheet is not the main payload of the rocket. The main customer is Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, an Indonesian satellite operator launching a telecommunications satellite called Nusantara Satu. SpaceIL, as a secondary carrier, was able to pay a lot less for his trip.
The rocket will also deploy an experimental satellite for the United States Air Force.
The first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket itself started and landed twice, one in July 2018 and another in October.
[ad_2]
Source link