Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Beresheet Lander Bound For The Moon Hits Ctrl-Alt-Delete

posted by chromas on Wednesday February 27 2019, @04:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-sorry-Dave,-I'm-afraid-I-can't-do-that
Also-that's-a-BOFH-excuse-if-I-ever-heard-one dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The little lander Beresheet hopes to make history in multiple ways this year.

The first commercial lander bound for the surface of the moon suffered a hiccup early Tuesday.

Israeli nonprofit organization SpaceIL's Beresheet spacecraft was supposed to perform an engine burn to raise its elliptical orbit around the Earth, but instead its computer unexpectedly reset itself. As a result, the maneuver was automatically cancelled.

[...] Shortly after the spacecraft was deployed from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last week, Beresheet's engineers found its star tracker, which helps determine its position in space, was sensitive to being blinded by the sun's rays. SpaceIL has said it's working on the issue

Representatives for SpaceIL didn't immediately respond to a request for more information on how the issues may affect Beresheet's mission timeline.

[...] Beresheet was built and launched on a relatively small budget of about $100 million, and as a result, it carries few of the backup systems that are included in typical NASA spacecraft.

Fortunately, SpaceIL says that so far Beresheet remains in communication with its control center and stands ready to try an orbit-boosting burn again.

Following a complicated set of orbits around Earth and then the moon, Beresheet is aiming to attempt a moon landing in April.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Beresheet Lander Bound For The Moon Hits Ctrl-Alt-Delete | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 23 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:05PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:05PM (#807681) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL#Launch [wikipedia.org]

    Beresheet is in Earth orbit, and after several elliptic orbits around Earth the spacecraft will slowly perform orbit raising. The orbit raising will take 1.5 months before reaching the Moon's area of influence. Once there, the spacecraft will perform maneuvers to be captured in a lunar orbit and preform elliptic and later circular orbits around the Moon between two weeks and one month. In the right orbit around the landing site, it will decelerate until soft landing on the lunar surface.

    India used a similar approach for the Mars Orbiter Mission [wikipedia.org]. It's slower, but probably a lot cheaper.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Informative=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   4  

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:10PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:10PM (#807684) Journal

    Well, I'm not mailing myself to the moon. I have no way of knowing whether I'm loaded on the Yankee Clipper, or the Occidental Sleeper.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 27 2019, @06:19PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 27 2019, @06:19PM (#807722)

    The fact that you can reach the moon at all as a secondary payload is already pretty impressive.
    It's as if we had reached a point where space exploration with many small cheap probes made sense. Expect to encounter a Wookie on an icy world soon.

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:19PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:19PM (#807756) Journal

    Hey, that's the same way I got to the Mun!