| Title | Israeli Spacecraft Beresheet Crash Site Spotted on Moon | |
| Date | Thursday May 16 2019, @10:29PM | |
| Author | Fnord666 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the apollo-18 dept. | ||
SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit organization, is dedicated to landing the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon. Beresheet was their first attempt at meeting this goal. While the spacecraft did land, it first touched the surface about 1000 meters per second faster than intended. The mishap occurred late in the descent profile when the main engine failed—resulting in a very low-angle (<10°), high-speed impact.
The Beresheet impact occurred on 11 April 2019 and LRO passed overhead 11 days later, allowing LROC to acquire a six-image (three NAC left-right pairs) sequence of the search area. The coordinates of the darkest pixel (lowest reflectance) of the central "smudge" are 32.5956°N, 19.3496°E, with a 20-m (latitude) by 8-m (longitude) 95% confidence interval, estimated from seven images acquired before the impact event (over the course of the LRO mission). The elevation is ~2613 meters, and although the uncertainty is not well constrained at this time, it is likely less than 10 meters.
What really happened is they encountered this.
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printed from SoylentNews, Israeli Spacecraft Beresheet Crash Site Spotted on Moon on 2024-04-19 00:42:27