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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.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:26PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:26PM (#807698) Journal

    If everyone else read the article, I can't believe I'm the first to notice the borked link.

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

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:27PM (#807699) Journal

    Not as significant. The borked link is inside the quoted portion of the article.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:28PM (#807700)

    No, we're just too polite to have mentioned it in mixed company.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:55PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:55PM (#807713) Journal

    Fixed. Whoever is running the bot needs to have it be able to detect relative URL paths and insert the full current domain in there.

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