2.04.2019

Israeli Moon Lander Tweaks Orbit to Prep for Thursday Lunar Arrival
And touchdown will occur on April 11, if all goes according to plan.

Israel's Beresheet lunar lander has almost made it to the moon.

The 5-foot-tall (1.5 meters) Beresheet fired its engines for a little over a minute early this morning (April 1), altering its trajectory slightly to prepare for a planned capture into lunar orbit on Thursday (April 4). 

If all goes according to plan, the robotic lander will touch down on the moon one week later, on April 11. That will be a huge milestone. To date, the only organizations to pull off a soft lunar landing are superpower governments — the Soviet Union, the United States and China.

Beresheet, meanwhile, is a private effort run by the nonprofit SpaceIL and the company Israel Aerospace Industries. SpaceIL formed in 2011 to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP), a $30 million competition that asked privately funded teams to land a spacecraft on the moon and have it perform a few basic tasks. 

The GLXP ended last year without a winner, but SpaceIL and some other teams kept working on their moon landers. 

Beresheet, whose name means "in the beginning" in Hebrew, launched into Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 21. Since then, the spacecraft has performed a series of orbit-raising maneuvers to get closer and closer to the moon. 

This morning's 72-second-long burn helped make some "final adjustments" ahead of capture into lunar orbit, mission team members said in an update this morning. It's unclear if any further such tweaks will be needed.

"The teams are assessing the results to determine if another alignment will be required before Beresheet enters the lunar orbit this Thursday," project team members said.

Beresheet made its last close approach to Earth yesterday (March 31), zooming within 1,056 miles (1,700 kilometers) of our planet, they added. The lander snapped a gorgeous photo to commemorate this passage, capturing Earth from a distance of about 9,940 miles (16,000 km). 

The image shows the Arabian peninsula and southeastern Africa; thick clouds cover Israel, Beresheet team members said in today's update.

Beresheet will perform some science work at and around the moon. For example, the lander will measure local lunar magnetic fields, and it's toting a small laser-reflector array for NASA to help prove out technology that could enable more precise landings on the moon and other bodies in the future.

Beresheet is also carrying a "lunar library" to help safeguard slices of human history and culture. But the main mission goals are to advance Israel's spaceflight program and to inspire young people to care more about science, technology, engineering and math.

Beresheet's total mission cost, including launch, is about $100 million, team members have said. 

Quelle: SC

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Update: 4.04.2019

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Israel’s Beresheet lander arrives in lunar orbit

An Israeli spacecraft has one shot Thursday to swing into orbit around the moon with a six-minute engine firing, a critical maneuver that will set up for the privately-funded probe’s historic landing attempt April 11.

The hydrazine-fueled main engine mounted to the base of the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander is set to ignite around 1415 GMT (10:15 a.m. EDT). The six-minute firing will reduce Beresheet’s velocity relative to the moon by more than 600 mph (about 1,000 kilometers per hour), enough for lunar gravity to capture the spacecraft in an elongated orbit.

If the robotic spacecraft misfires Thursday, it will continue past the moon and escape Earth’s gravitational grasp to head deeper into the solar system, bringing the mission to an end.

“It’s a simple maneuver, but it’s very important and very critical,” said Ido Anteby, the CEO of SpaceIL, the non-profit organization that led the development of the Beresheet mission.

Beresheet aims to become the first privately-funded spacecraft to orbit another planetary body after Thursday’s lunar capture maneuver. With a successful touchdown April 11, the craft will become the first private probe to land on the moon.

The spacecraft will target a landing in the Mare Serenitatis, or Sea of Serenity, region on the upper right part of the moon as viewed from Earth.

Beresheet has been circling the Earth since launching Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lander rode into space as a piggyback payload on the Falcon 9, joining an Indonesian communications satellite and a U.S. Air Force space surveillance satellite on the same rocket.

The Falcon 9’s upper stage released Beresheet in an elliptical orbit ranging as high as 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) in altitude. After separation, the spacecraft deployed its four landing legs. With the lander gear extended, Beresheet has a diameter of around 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) and measures 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

A series of main engine burns nudged Beresheet into longer orbits that took the spacecraft farther from Earth.

“Since we were launched about five weeks ago, we’ve been circling the Earth in ever-growing orbits, and our current orbit brings us to about 420,000 kilometers (261,000 miles) above Earth, just above the moon’s trajectory. We’ve passed our final perigee, that’s the closest point of approach to Earth, a couple of days ago, successfully,” said Opher Doron, general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ space division, which built the Beresheet spacecraft and operates the lander’s control center.

Beresheet has traveled more than 3.4 million miles — about 5.5 million kilometers — since departing Cape Canaveral.

Ground controllers identified an issue with the spacecraft’s star tracker cameras shortly after launch. The cameras are used to locate the positions of stars in the sky, helping determine Beresheet’s orientation in space. SpaceIL says the star trackers are too sensitive to blinding by bright sunlight.

Beresheet also missed one of its orbit-raising engine burns in late February due to a computer reset, but engineers kept mission on schedule for its arrival at the moon.

“We’ve made some corrections along the way to our course, and we are en route to intercepting the moon … Thursday afternoon (Israeli time), and there we will be performing a complex maneuver to get out of Earth’s orbit into the moon’s orbit,” Doron said Tuesday. “So we’ll be captured by the moon by our maneuver, and after that, we are on our way to landing.”

Beresheet must accomplish at least 70 percent of the impulse planned for Thursday’s lunar capture burn in order to be snared into orbit around the moon, according to Yoav Landsman, Beresheet’s deputy mission director at SpaceIL.

If Thursday’s maneuver goes according to plan, Beresheet will enter a 14-hour orbit ranging between 310 miles (500 kilometers) and roughly 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) from the moon. Further engine firings over the next week will place the lander in a circular 124-mile-high (200-kilometer) orbit in preparation for landing.

“Once we reach the right point we’ll be just giving the spacecraft the command to start the landing phase,” said Yariv Bash, a co-founder of SpaceIL. “From that moment on, the spacecraft will automatically start landing on its own, all the way to the surface of the moon.

“Roughly 15 feet (5 meters) or so above the surface of the moon, the velocity will go to zero, and then we’ll just shut off the motors and the spacecraft will perform a free fall all the way to the surface of the moon,” Bash said Tuesday. “The legs of the spacecraft were designed to sustain that fall, and hopefully once we are on the moon we’ll be able to send back images and videos to Earth.”

Three young Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs established SpaceIL in 2011 in pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize, which promised $20 million grand prize for the first team to land a privately-funded spacecraft on the moon, return high-definition imagery, and demonstrate mobility on the lunar surface.

The Google Lunar X Prize contest ended last year without a winner, but Beresheet’s backers kept the mission alive.

Morris Kahn, a South Africa-born Israeli billionaire, put $40 million of his fortune toward the mission, and serves as SpaceIL’s president. Other donors include Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, a casino and resort magnate who lives in Las Vegas. IAI, the lander’s prime contractor, also invested some of its own internal research and development money into the program.

The Israeli Space Agency awarded SpaceIL around $2 million, the program’s only government funding.

The entire mission has cost around $100 million, significantly less than any government-backed lunar lander. Still, raising $100 million from private donors proved a challenge.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought that we would get to something like $100 million, but once we got going, we were actually in,” Kahn said Tuesday. “It was a challenge, and actually, I love a challenge.”

The X Prize Foundation, which organized the original Google Lunar X Prize competition, announced March 28 that it will offer a $1 million “Moonshot Award” to SpaceIL if the Beresheet mission successfully lands on the moon.

“Though the Google Lunar X Prize went unclaimed, we are thrilled to have stimulated a diversity of teams from around the world to pursue their ambitious lunar missions, and we are proud to be able to recognize SpaceIL’s accomplishment with this Moonshot Award,” said Anousheh Ansari, chief executive officer of the X Prize Foundation.

“SpaceIL’s mission represents the democratization of space exploration,” said Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation. “We are optimistic about seeing this first domino fall, setting off a chain reaction of increasingly affordable and repeatable commercial missions to the moon and beyond.”

A successful landing will not only mark a first for the private space industry, but will also thrust Israel into an exclusive group of nations that have put a spacecraft on the moon. So far, the United States, Russia and China have successfully landed probes on the moon.

“We have a vision to show off Israel’s best qualities to the entire world,” said Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-Israeli businessman who helped fund the mission, in a press conference between Beresheet’s launch. “Tiny Israel, tiny, tiny Israel, is about to become the fourth nation to land on the moon. And this is a remarkable thing, because we continue to demonstrate our ability to punch far, far, far above our weight, and to show off our skills, our innovation, our creativity in tackling any difficult problem that could possibly exist.”

Beresheet means “genesis” or “in the beginning” in Hebrew.

Because of the project’s limited budget — a fraction of the cost of government-funded lunar landers — the Israeli team had to adapt technology designed for other purposes to the moon mission. For example, the main thruster on the lander is a modified engine typically used to adjust the orbits of large communications satellites.

During the landing sequence, the engine will be switched on and off to control the lander’s descent rate. It can’t be throttled.

Most of the systems on the spacecraft were built without a backup to control costs.

“Our spacecraft has very low redundancy,” Anteby said. “One sensor that fails could fail the whole mission.”

After landing, Beresheet will collect data on the magnetic field at the landing site. NASA also provided a laser reflector on the spacecraft, which scientists will use to determine the exact distance to the moon, and to pinpoint the lander’s location. The U.S. space agency is also providing communications and tracking support to the mission.

The German space agency — DLR — also helped the SpaceIL team with drop testing to simulate the conditions the spacecraft will encounter at the moment of landing.

The Israeli-built lander is designed to function at least two days on the moon, enough time to beam back basic scientific data and a series of panoramic images, plus a selfie. The laser reflector is a passive payload, and will be useful long after the spacecraft stops operating.

Beresheet also aims to deliver a time capsule to the moon with the Israeli flag, and digital copies of the Israeli national anthem, the Bible, and other national and cultural artifacts.

Doron said IAI originally did not see much of a future for the custom-designed lander design after the Beresheet mission. But that is changing as NASA and the European Space Agency look at purchasing commercial rides to the moon for science experiments, and eventually people.

IAI and OHB, a German aerospace company, signed an agreement in January that could build on the Beresheet mission by constructing future commercial landers to ferry scientific instruments and other payloads to the moon’s surface for ESA.

According to Doron, IAI is also in discussions with U.S. companies to use Israeli technology developed for the Beresheet project on commercial lunar landers for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. NASA selected nine companies last year to be eligible to compete for contracts to transport science and tech demo payloads to the lunar surface.

SpaceIL and IAI were not among the winners, but Israeli engineers could partner with U.S. firms to meet NASA’s requirements.

Quelle: SN

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Update: 5.04.2019

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Israel’s Beresheet lander brakes into lunar orbit

Six weeks after launching from Cape Canaveral, an Israeli-built probe funded through private donations arrived in orbit around the moon Thursday, setting the stage for the mission’s final descent to the lunar surface April 11.

Engineers at the Beresheet mission control center in Israel confirmed the successful maneuver after telemetry radioed from the spacecraft showed it fired its main engine for approximately six minutes, slowing its speed enough to allow the moon’s gravity to capture the probe in an elongated lunar orbit.

The Beresheet spacecraft ignited its main engine at 1418 GMT (10:18 a.m. EDT) Thursday for the make-or-break maneuver to steer into orbit around the moon. If the probe misfired, Israeli officials said the spacecraft would have continued on into deep space, bringing the mission to an end.

Mission controllers, managers and VIPs watched as data relayed from the spacecraft to the Israeli control center showed the engine burning normally. A display showing the total velocity change, or delta-V, from the engine firing counted upward until it reached 323.663 meters per second (724 mph).

The engine burn was designed to slow the probe’s velocity by 324 meters per second, and officials celebrated the result, which made Israel the seventh country or international organization to place a spacecraft in orbit around the moon — after Russia, the United States, Japan, the European Space Agency, China and India.

“After six weeks in space, we have succeeded in overcoming another critical stage by entering the moon’s gravity,” said Ido Anteby, CEO of SpaceIL, a non-profit organization founded in 2011 to manage Beresheet’s development. “This is another significant achievement our engineering team achieved while demonstrating determination and creativity in finding solutions to unexpected challenges. We still have a long way until the lunar landing, but I‘m convinced our team will complete the mission to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the moon, making us all proud.”

Beresheet was expected to enter an elliptical, or oval-shaped, orbit ranging between 310 miles (500 kilometers) and 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) above the moon’s surface. Several more engine firings during the next week will place Beresheet in a circular 124-mile-high (200-kilometer) orbit in preparation for landing.

Beresheet’s lunar capture maneuver Thursday was also historic for the commercial space industry. The mission was designed, built and launched for around $100 million, and almost all of the funding came from private donors and corporate investments.

“We’ve done it! First privately funded spacecraft in lunar orbit,” tweeted Yoav Landsman, Beresheet’s deputy mission director at SpaceIL. “Feels like the dawn of a new era of commercial space.”

Morris Kahn, a South African-born Israeli billionaire, contributed $40 million of his fortune to the project. Kahn, 89, was at Beresheet’s control center in Israel for Thursday’s critical maneuver.

“We’ve had support from all over the world,” Kahn said Thursday. “NASA has recognized what we’re doing, and the world has recognized what we’re doing, and what we’re doing is we’re pioneering something in space. We’re showing that a small country can actually do an amazing job.”

But more perils remain ahead for Beresheet. Its mission will culminate with a landing April 11 — next Thursday — in the Mare Serenitatis, or Sea of Serenity, region on the upper right part of the moon as viewed from Earth.

“After a challenging journey, we made tonight another Israeli record and became the seventh nation to orbit the moon,” said Nimrod Sheffer, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries, Beresheet’s prime contractor. “Even before Beresheet was launched, it already was a national success story that shows our groundbreaking technological capabilities. Tonight, we again reach new heights. In the coming week, our talented engineering team will work 24/7 to bring us to an historic event on April 11.”

Beresheet launched Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding piggyback with a larger Indonesian communications satellite and an experimental U.S. Air Force spacecraft.

The Falcon 9’s upper stage released Beresheet in an elliptical orbit ranging as high as 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) in altitude. After separation, the spacecraft deployed its four landing legs. With the lander gear extended, Beresheet has a diameter of around 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) and measures 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall, about the size of a golf cart.

A series of main engine burns nudged Beresheet into longer orbits that took the spacecraft farther from Earth. Beresheet traveled more than 3.4 million miles — about 5.5 million kilometers — between its departure from Cape Canaveral and arrival in lunar orbit.

Ground controllers identified an issue with the spacecraft’s star tracker cameras shortly after launch. The cameras are used to locate the positions of stars in the sky, helping determine Beresheet’s orientation in space. SpaceIL says the star trackers are too sensitive to blinding by bright sunlight.

Beresheet also missed one of its orbit-raising engine burns in late February due to a computer reset, but engineers kept mission on schedule for its arrival at the moon.

With Beresheet’s landing — the spacecraft’s most challenging task — still ahead, SpaceIL officials are still cautious about the the mission’s chances of a safe touchdown.

“Once we reach the right point we’ll be just giving the spacecraft the command to start the landing phase,” said Yariv Bash, a co-founder of SpaceIL. “From that moment on, the spacecraft will automatically start landing on its own, all the way to the surface of the moon.

“Roughly 15 feet (5 meters) or so above the surface of the moon, the velocity will go to zero, and then we’ll just shut off the motors and the spacecraft will perform a free fall all the way to the surface of the moon,” Bash said Tuesday. “The legs of the spacecraft were designed to sustain that fall, and hopefully once we are on the moon we’ll be able to send back images and videos to Earth.”

Three young Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs established SpaceIL in 2011 in pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize, which promised $20 million grand prize for the first team to land a privately-funded spacecraft on the moon, return high-definition imagery, and demonstrate mobility on the lunar surface.

The Google Lunar X Prize contest ended last year without a winner, but Beresheet’s backers kept the mission alive.

Kahn, the mission’s largest single financial contributor, serves as SpaceIL’s president. Other donors include Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, a casino and resort magnate who lives in Las Vegas. IAI, the lander’s prime contractor, also invested some of its own internal research and development money into the program.

The Israeli Space Agency awarded SpaceIL around $2 million, the program’s only government funding.

The entire mission cost significantly less than any government-backed lunar lander. Still, raising $100 million from private donors proved a challenge.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought that we would get to something like $100 million, but once we got going, we were actually in,” Kahn said Tuesday. “It was a challenge, and actually, I love a challenge.”

The X Prize Foundation, which organized the original Google Lunar X Prize competition, announced March 28 that it will offer a $1 million “Moonshot Award” to SpaceIL if the Beresheet mission successfully lands on the moon.

“Though the Google Lunar X Prize went unclaimed, we are thrilled to have stimulated a diversity of teams from around the world to pursue their ambitious lunar missions, and we are proud to be able to recognize SpaceIL’s accomplishment with this Moonshot Award,” said Anousheh Ansari, chief executive officer of the X Prize Foundation.

“SpaceIL’s mission represents the democratization of space exploration,” said Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation. “We are optimistic about seeing this first domino fall, setting off a chain reaction of increasingly affordable and repeatable commercial missions to the moon and beyond.”

A successful landing will not only mark a first for the private space industry, but will also thrust Israel into an exclusive group of nations that have put a spacecraft on the moon. So far, the United States, Russia and China have successfully landed probes on the moon.

“We have a vision to show off Israel’s best qualities to the entire world,” said Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-Israeli businessman who helped fund the mission, in a press conference between Beresheet’s launch. “Tiny Israel, tiny, tiny Israel, is about to become the fourth nation to land on the moon. And this is a remarkable thing, because we continue to demonstrate our ability to punch far, far, far above our weight, and to show off our skills, our innovation, our creativity in tackling any difficult problem that could possibly exist.”

Because of the project’s limited budget — a fraction of the cost of government-funded lunar landers — the Israeli team had to adapt technology designed for other purposes to the moon mission. For example, the main thruster on the lander is a modified engine typically used to adjust the orbits of large communications satellites.

During the landing sequence, the engine will be switched on and off to control the lander’s descent rate. It can’t be throttled.

Most of the systems on the spacecraft were built without a backup to control costs.

“Our spacecraft has very low redundancy,” Anteby said Tuesday. “One sensor that fails could fail the whole mission.”

After landing, Beresheet will collect data on the magnetic field at the landing site. NASA also provided a laser reflector on the spacecraft, which scientists will use to determine the exact distance to the moon, and to pinpoint the lander’s location. The U.S. space agency is also providing communications and tracking support to the mission.

The German space agency — DLR — also helped the SpaceIL team with drop testing to simulate the conditions the spacecraft will encounter at the moment of landing.

The Israeli-built lander is designed to function at least two days on the moon, enough time to beam back basic scientific data and a series of panoramic images, plus a selfie. The laser reflector is a passive payload, and will be useful long after the spacecraft stops operating.

Beresheet also aims to deliver a time capsule to the moon with the Israeli flag, and digital copies of the Israeli national anthem, the Bible, and other national and cultural artifacts.

Opher Doron, general manager of IAI’s space division, said he originally did foresee any business applications for the custom-designed lander design after the Beresheet mission. But that is changing as NASA and the European Space Agency look at purchasing commercial rides to the moon for science experiments, and eventually people.

IAI and OHB, a German aerospace company, signed an agreement in January that could build on the Beresheet mission by constructing future commercial landers to ferry scientific instruments and other payloads to the moon’s surface for ESA.

According to Doron, IAI is also in discussions with U.S. companies to use Israeli technology developed for the Beresheet project on commercial lunar landers for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. NASA selected nine companies last year to be eligible to compete for contracts to transport science and tech demo payloads to the lunar surface.

SpaceIL and IAI were not among the winners, but Israeli engineers could partner with U.S. firms to meet NASA’s requirements.

Quelle: SN

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Update: 9.04.2019

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Beresheet unmanned spacecraft will be launched to the moon on Friday morning, 3:45 IST

After eight years of development, Beresheet spacecraft will be launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Friday, January 22, 2019 3:45AM IST. If successful, the 160-kilogram unmanned four-legged spacecraft will also be the smallest and cheapest spacecraft to land on the moon. Beresheet, is the creation of an Israeli nonprofit called SpaceIL, collaborating with IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) and with contribution of ISA (Israel Space Agency) of the Department of Science and Technology. 

Beresheet set to touch down in the Sea of Tranquility on April 11.

Quelle: ISA

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בעוד שישה ימים זה יקרה: החללית "בראשית" תנחת על הירח בתמרון מורכב שיתבצע בצורה אוטונומית. רק אמש (חמישי) הצוות ההנדסי של SpaceIL והתעשייה האווירית ביצעו את התמרון המכריע ביותר עד כה במסע החללית אל הירח - "לכידת הירח". התמרון אפשר לחללית להילכד בכוח המשיכה של הירח ובכך להתחיל להקיף אותו. "כנראה שישראל המדינה השביעית שנלכדה סביב הירח", אמר עידו ענתבי במהלך מסיבת העיתונאים שבה גם בוצע התמרון המכריע. למעשה, שלושת השלבים המכריעים במשימה הינם: השיגור שעבר בהצלחה, שלב לכידת הירח והנחיתה המיועדת ב-11 באפריל. עד כה החללית הקיפה במסלולים אליפטיים את כדור הארץ, במהלכם בוצעו מספר תמרונים (הפעלת מנועים) על מנת להגביה את מסלולה ולהרחיק אותה מכדור הארץ. אולם עד הנחיתה על הירח, למהנדסים שעובדים מסביב לשעון, צפויים כמה אתגרים.

במרכז הבקרה חוגגים את הבשורה: החללית נלכדה סביב הירח. (צילום: אלירן אביטל)

 

עד כה ב-SpaceIL ובתעשייה האווירית נתקלו בשלושה אתגרים שעליהם הצליחו להתגבר: מערכת עוקבי הכוכבים מחשב המשימה ובאיכון החללית. מערכת הניווט של החללית הסתנוורה בזוויות גדולה יותר ממה שחשבו ומחשב המשימה ביצע איתחולים שנמשכו לאורך כל המשימה. "מספר האיתחולים היה גדול יותר ממה שציפינו. מרביתם כנראה נגרמים בגלל סביבת חלל, קרינה, חלקיקים טעונים ולמנוע אותם זה בלתי אפשרי. המהנדסים שלנו הצליחו לטפל גם בבעיות האיתחולים", הוסיף ענתבי. עוד דיווחו על אתגרים באיכון החלללית וכי נדרש שיפור נוסף. בתעשייה האווירית ו-SpaceIL חברו אל חברה גרמנית ושוודית המספקת אנטנות ברחבי העולם, כשהיא עשויה לעזור להתגבר על הקשיים.

עוד בנושא:

"הזדמנות אחת לעשות את זה": השלב הבא והקריטי של החללית בראשית
צפו: החללית הישראלית "בראשית" בסלפי ראשון מהחלל
"תמרון נוסף מוצלח לחללית": עקבו אחרי "בראשית" במסע לירח

"שני אתגרים אחרונים: לכידת הירח והנחיתה"

במהלך השבוע הקרוב בתעשייה האווירית ו-SpaceIL יצטרכו להביא את בראשית למסלול האופטימלי לנחיתה על הירח. "אלו ימים מאוד צפופים - חמישה תמרונים בשבעה ימים. זה מאוד מורכב כי אנחנו צריכים לעשות עבור כל תמרון שני דברים: לדעת איפה אנחנו נמצאים ולתכנן את המסלול", אמר עופר דורון, מנהל מפעל חלל בתעשייה האווירית. "אין לנו GPS שעובד באזור הירח, אנחנו צריכים לשערך את המיקום של החללית מכדור הארץ והיו לנו המון בעיות כי היו אי דיוקים עם התחנות שפזורות ברחבי העולם. מעבר לכך, תכנון המסלול הוא תהליך שלוקח יומיים וכעת יש לנו חמישה תמרונים לבצע בשבעה ימים. יהיה מאוד לחוץ אבל אנחנו נעמוד בזה בכבוד. הצוות יעבוד מאוד קשה".

למרות התקלות, בתעשייה האווירית הצליחו להתגבר על כולן. (עיבוד: דורון שיינר)

 

 

הנחיתה המושלמת עבור החללית תהיה בשעות הבוקר של הירח, מאחר ובשעות הצהריים הקרקע של הירח מתחממת ומגיעה לטמפרטורות של 130 עד 150 מעלות. עוד חשוב לתעשייה האווירית ו-SpaceIL להביא את החללית במהירות המדויקת, כשכעת היא משייטת אל עבר הירח במהירות של 6,500 קמ"ש. "אנחנו נסובב את החללית לקראת הנחיתה כי הדלק יהיה באזור שפונה לכיוון המנועים", הוסיף ענתבי. "ברגע שהחללית תסתובב, אנחנו נפעיל מנוע ראשי ונתחיל בגלישה תוך כדי בלימה לאורך של כמעט 800 קילומטרים אל כיוון הירח. נוריד את החללית ממהירות של 6,500 קמ"ש למהירות של אפס. בגובה של 5 קילומטרים, החללית תפעיל את מד הגובה ומד המהירות שמבוסס על לייזר".

ביום חמישי בשעה 23:00 החללית צפויה להתחיל את שלב הנחיתה והיא תתבצע בצורה אוטונומית. החל מגובה של 23 קילומטרים מהירח, החללית תקבל פקודות מהקרקע ומהשלב הזה היא תבצע את הנחיתה בצורה אוטונומית. היא תפעיל את החיישנים שנותנים מיקום, תעביר למרכז הבקרה והוא יעביר את הפקודות האחרונות לנחיתה. עוד אחד מהאתגרים בנחיתה הוא לוודא שהחללית לא נוחתת במכתש או על אבנים שיפילו אותה. "בדרך יש לנו הרבה מאוד סיכונים: החל מבעיית מחשב או כל בעיה אחרת שתגרום להפסקת פעולת מנוע. אנחנו נוחתים נחיתה עיוורת. מספיק שרגל אחת פוגעת בסלע ורגל אחרת לא והיא עלולה פשוט להתפך", הוסיף ענתבי. "הדבר שכולנו מבינים הכי טוב: זו הפעם הראשונה שהחללית נוחתת על הירח. אף פעם לא בדקנו את זה וכל הניסויים שהיו עד כה היו חלקיים. אלו לא ניסויים כמו שהיינו מצפים שמישהו יבדוק את המכונית שלנו לפני שאנחנו עולים על ההגה".

ממרחק של 500 קילומטרים מהירח: החללית מתקרבת לנחיתה. (צילום: בראשית)

 

החללית יצאה לדרך כשמעבר לגאווה הלאומית שהעמותה והתעשייה האווירית מביאים לישראל, היא גם תבצע כמה מחקרים מדעיים בשיתוף עם נאס"א ומכון וייצמן. החללית תבצע מדידות של השדה המגנטי במהלך הנחיתה ובאתר הנחיתה. המדידות יבוצעו על ידי מכשיר מגנומטר המורכב על ידי החללית והוא יעביר את הנתונים לחדר הבקרה. בין שאר הנתונים: כיצד החללית מגיבה לקרקע של הירח. אחרי שתשלים את המשימה המדעית, החללית תישאר על הירח אבל בכדור הארץ היא תמשיך להביא גאווה ובעיקר מקור להשראה שהתחיל בשלושה יזמים שחלמו להשתתף בתחרות של ג

Quelle: ISA

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Update: 10.04.2019

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Israeli moon landing to mark milestone in lunar exploration

When SpaceIL's Beresheet spacecraft touches down on the moon's Sea of Serenity on Thursday, it will be the 21st mission — and the first privately funded one — to make a soft landing on the lunar surface.

Details: This graphic shows every moon landing, beginning with the Soviets' Luna 9, which landed on Feb. 3, 1966.

• It also highlights two other milestones: Apollo 11, the first crewed landing, and Chang'e 4, the first landing on the moon's far side.
• The timeline beneath the moon shows when each landing occurred, highlighting the 37-year gap between the last Soviet mission in 1976 and the first Chinese one in 2013. It also underscores how lunar exploration is open to new players, not just the US and Russia.
• The graphic is interactive. You can spin the moon, and you can tap on each mission's dot — either on the moon itself or on the timeline — to learn more information about that mission.

Quelle: AXIOS

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Update: 11.04.2019

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Israel's moon mission set to make space exploration history

Following the dissolution of the USSR, public funding for space projects dried, but now the private sector is taking up the slack.

Israel will become only the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon if its robotic spacecraft Beresheet touches down softly on Thursday.

A potential so-called hard landing will mean Israel joins a longer list of nations which have simply littered our primary satellite.

But unlike the successful American, Russian, and Chinese lunar missions before it - and even unlike the unsuccessful ones - the Israeli trip to the moon is principally a privately funded enterprise, launched by an organisation called SpaceIL.

On Thursday, the Beresheet robot will aim to land on the near-side of the moon, potentially marking the latest milestone in the growth of private enterprise in the space exploration sector.

After a two-month journey covering roughly four million miles (6.5m km) as it orbited the Earth at a steadily increasing distance until it fell to the gravitational pull of the moon, the culmination of the $100m mission will be a nervous affair.

The spacecraft weighs 1,290lbs (585kg) and was built by Israel's non-profit venture SpaceIL alongside the state-owned defence contractor Israel Aerospace Industries.

 

A soft touchdown would rank alongside the successful landing and recycling of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, which have drastically reduced the cost of orbital launches, and notably the rocket that took Beresheet into space.

Quelle: skynews