Israeli hopes dashed after spacecraft crashes on Moon
State-owned IAI and nonprofit space venture SpaceIL’s unmanned robotic lander suffers engine failure during final descent
Yehud — Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed onto the moon on Thursday after a series of technical failures during its final descent, shattering hopes of a historic controlled landing on the lunar surface. The unmanned robotic lander suffered periodic engine and communications failures during the landing sequence, which lasted about 21 minutes, the support team said. Beresheet, whose name is Hebrew for the biblical phrase “In the beginning”, had travelled through space for seven weeks in a series of expanding orbits around Earth before crossing into the Moon’s gravity last week. The final manoeuvre on Wednesday brought it into a tight elliptical orbit around the Moon, about 15km from the surface at its closest. From there it was a short, nail-biting and ultimately disappointing conclusion. “It seems that a failure in our inertial measurements unit caused a chain of events in the spacecraft avionics which cut off the engines and caused us to lose the mission,” said Opher Doron, GM o...
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