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Yesterday, Israel's first mission to the moon ended abruptly and unsatisfactorily. SpaceIL's lunar lander Beresheet, which was part of a privately funded mission that would have made Israel the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, went bankrupt at the very last minute.
Immediately after the crash of the lander, it is not clear what's wrong. A problem with the engine of the spacecraft was suspected, but the signal of the undercarriage was lost shortly after the restart of the engine. It was therefore difficult to get answers. After studying the data of the landing attempt, SpaceIL now has a better idea of what's wrong.
"The preliminary technical information collected by the teams shows that the first technical problem occurred 14 km above the Moon", SpaceIL explained in a tweet. "At 150 meters, when the connection with #Beresheet was lost, it was moving at 500 km / h, making a collision inevitable."
"Our engineers believe that a technical problem in one of the components led to the shutdown of the main engine, which made it impossible to slow the descent of the spacecraft. By the time the engine was restarted, its speed was too high to land properly. "
This is essentially what we supposed to have done on the basis of what the viewers were able to see during the live broadcast of the landing attempt. The engine lost power and the probe signal went out a few moments after it was fired.
This is a huge disappointment for SpaceIL and everyone following the Beresheet course. Nevertheless, the mission has been successful in many respects, including successfully starting in lunar orbit, which is not an easy task.
In the same vein, the XPrize group decided to award a "million – dollar" Moonshot Award to SpaceIL to help the team get into the game. all upcoming businesses.
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