Beresheet Update: If At First You Don't Succeed...

SpaceIL

Unfortunately, Israel will have to temporarily settle for being the seventh nation to successfully place a spacecraft in orbit around the Moon after its Beresheet lander fell short of safely touching down on the lunar surface today...which would've made it only the fourth country (behind the United States, Russia and China) to accomplish this feat. 12:25 PM, Pacific Daylight Time (10:25 PM, Israeli Time) would've marked the moment that Beresheet softly landed at Mare Serenitatis (the "Sea of Serenity") after its 20-minute descent from lunar orbit. Instead, the flight team at SpaceIL—which developed and operated the four-legged robotic probe—lost contact with the lander just as it came within 489 feet (149 meters) of the Moon's surface. Issues with the main engine plagued Beresheet in its final moments of descent. And just as the main engine came back online and began firing again, it was too late.

On the plus side, the XPRIZE Foundation will still reward SpaceIL with $1 million after it came close to landing the first privately-funded spacecraft on the Moon. This should obviously be the seed money for the construction of Beresheet's successor. However, based on what I read about its now-defunct predecessor, Beresheet 2 (not its official name) should make up for known issues in the previous lander by having more redundancy in its systems, use star trackers that aren't sensitive to glaring sunlight, and possibly utilize another thruster for its main engine (the engine on the original Beresheet is a British-made thruster intended for use on satellites). Of course, now is not the time to point fingers at anyone or anything as Beresheet's flight team is still analyzing data to see what truly went wrong with the lander just as it was on the verge of making history.

All I can say is, rise from the ashes Beresheet—just like how NASA's Phoenix lander rose from the ashes of the Mars Polar Lander, which was lost in 1999...and how Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (which are still sending back stunning photos from the Red Planet) are the successors (along with the now-silent Mars Global Surveyor) to NASA's Mars Observer, which fell silent just 3 days before it was to enter Martian orbit in 1993. Space exploration is hard. But when rocket scientists are giving a second chance to redo a space mission that suffered a heartbreaking setback, it can be glorious. I hope the nation of Israel will give the Beresheet mission another opportunity to truly become the historic endeavor it was destined to be. Carry on.


SpaceIL