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A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday
- Faaak 8y agoCiting wikipedia because it's not on the article: "In October 2015, SpaceIL signed a contract for a launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster, via Spaceflight Industries.[15][40] It was launched on 22 February 2019 at 0145 UTC (20:45 local time on 21 February) as a secondary payload,[4][6][23] along with the telecom satellite PSN-6.[41] Beresheet is being controlled by a command center in Yehud, Israel.[42] From 24 February to 19 March, the main engine was used four times for orbit raising, putting its apogee close to the Moon's orbital distance.[43] The spacecraft performed maneuvers so as to be successfully captured into an elliptical lunar orbit on 4 April 2019, and has adjusted its flight pattern in a circular orbit around the Moon. Once in the correct circular orbit, it will decelerate for a soft landing on the lunar surface, planned for 11 April 2019.[44] "
- penagwin 8y agoI'm really excited about this! The more entities that can launch, and land vehicles the better! This will surely benefit everyone! Random though, when private companies like SpaceX "replace" say NASA's service of launching rockets, would this free more resources for NASA to explore other things?
- JshWright 8y agoThat's exactly the goal of NASA's commercial launch programs (ISS resupply, etc). NASA wants to (and should) focus on science, and pushing the limits further. Commercial companies like SpaceX are now taking on the role of operating (and refining) the proven technologies.
- flyinglizard 8y agoIt's semi-private; the funding is private, and the team is lead by volunteers, but much of this effort is supported by Israeli Aerospace Industries which is a government owned company. I'm not sure how much, but you have the IAI logo plastered all over the mission. What's true is that it's not a government initiated program per se, but it's still not entirely private either. Commendable nonetheless.
- beagle3 8y agoAFAIK all funding was private, and though IAI provided expertise, they were paid for it (likely at-cost and not for-profit, but still)
- tracer4201 8y agoAny word what imaging or video capabilities are on the lander? Would love to see video from the surface in 4K.
- radley 8y agoProbably not. The goal of the project was to demonstrate a private company landing safely on the moon. Their second goal is for it to travel a short distance on the surface.
- jandrese 8y agoMight have met the second goal depending on how well it bounced.
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- clojurestan 8y agohttps://contactgbs.com/space/ https://contactgbs.com/space/
- jpindar 8y agoIt sent us a selfie. https://www.space.com/israel-moon-lander-earth-selfie.html https://www.space.com/israel-moon-lander-earth-selfie.html Here's some images from the approach: https://earthsky.org/space/israel-beresheet-spacecraft-moon-landing-april-11-2019 https://earthsky.org/space/israel-beresheet-spacecraft-moon-... According to that site, Beresheet has a high-resolution camera to take panoramic images of its landing site.
- nir 8y agoAccording to a post by one of the project's initiators, the lander will attempt to broadcast video from the moon's surface. Success depends on the ultimate landing angle which will determine how much power its solar panels will be able to provide.
- ohadpr 8y agonot sure about the camera but the connection is 20 kb/sec
- majortennis 8y agounmanned though right?
- w8vY7ER 8y agoright, can see more about the lander here if curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL#Beresheet_lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL#Beresheet_lander
- JshWright 8y agoI took my daughter to this launch (we happened to be vacationing in the area). It was an evening launch and we spent the day at KSC. On the bus tour around the launch pads we happened to sit right behind a couple members of the SpaceIL team (including the chief systems engineer). They were extremely friendly and happy to answer all sorts of questions. Best of luck to the team on this exciting day!
- atemerev 8y agoMission budget is around $100 million (including launch costs). Which is modest for moon landing attempts, but still well outside of a one-shot fully privately funded initiative. Perhaps still a possibility of being crowdsourced. Google Lunar X prize was $20 million, which is more realistic for a private program. Still, this is a _great_ leap forward. Now, students routinely design and launch satellites (around $50k for a CubeSat launch); I hope that someday the same will go for lunar probes.
- ddebernardy 8y agoIt's neat that they'll be live streaming it.
- GoodByeMoonMan 8y agoProbably not going to end well since Earth has had a treaty in place since 1972 which no longer allows humans to land on the moon I'd expect some retaliation from the moon's current inhabitants. If this craft ventures too far into the restricted zone we'll probably end up hearing news about it's mysterious failure / LOS.
- kaycebasques 8y ago> a nascent commercial space effort that seeks to develop a base of economic activity on the Moon Can someone clue me in on what types of commercial activity will happen first?
- dr_dshiv 8y agoScience first, but the biggest economic driver will be tourism and sports. Moonball will be the biggest sporting event broadcast on Earth. Jumping 20 feet for the dunk? Yes please. But before team sports, dirtbiking will be a special once-in-a-lifetime moon tourist experience. Going forward, there will be special culinary options due to the excessively large moonfruits that can be grown in low gravity. The trip will only take a day of travel. Plenty of living room in those enormous natural moon caves (lava tubes). Let's have some fun up there.
- mschuster91 8y ago> Science first, but the biggest economic driver will be tourism and sports. Tourism for a couple of ultra-rich, yeah, but sports? Need massive structures for that one. I rather believe that Moon commercial usage will be dominated by resource gathering: mining for rare materials deposited by aeons of asteroid hits, helium-3 (assuming the Moon Nazis from Iron Sky left us anything), or anything that can be chemically converted to rocket fuels in order to provide efficient fueling options for Mars and beyond missions.
- dr_dshiv 8y agoLook up moon lava tubes. There are huge prebuilt structures on the moon. Sports create value through mass attention. The moon is more than a passthrough to Mars. The moon is fun and fun is money.
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- galago 8y agoAdvertising. It has a bunch of logos for the people who financed it. In a way, the US space program is an ad for the US military, but this is more overt.
- yhersk0vitz 8y ago2 hours to go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7GUHd554NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7GUHd554NY Also: "The competition has already announced that if Beresheet's landing goes as planned, the team will win a $1 million Moonshot Award."
- distant_hat 8y agoIf anyone deserves a Moonshot award, it has to be them.
- smogcutter 8y agoOne step closer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnSGz8vW0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnSGz8vW0U
- mtw 8y agoIf it's a private spacecraft, how do you make this work financially? How do you find $100m ? It's not like there are commercial opportunities possible on the moon. Or the technology would be re-used by Israel for rockets?
- twic 8y agoIn April 2014, American philanthropist Sheldon Adelson donated US$16.4 million to the project,[13] and in June 2017, the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) announced a donation of additional 7.5 million ILS (US$2,083,333), after having donated 2 million ILS (US$555,556) in previous years.[14] In November 2017, SpaceIL announced that they needed US$30 million to finish the project. Morris Kahn resigned from chairing the board, and promised $10M if the organization could raise the additional $20M.[20] The amount required was produced by a few major donors.[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL#History
- agildehaus 8y agohttp://www.spaceil.com/major-donors/ http://www.spaceil.com/major-donors/ Looks mostly like their funding is from donors who want to promote Israel or STEM? They also received funding from the Israeli government, but I believe it was a small percentage (< 5%).
- Illniyar 8y agoMost of the money is from private donors, some of it is from the government, though that is pretty common -lots of governments give out grants and funding to private organizations for the purpose of cultivating ingenuity or developing certain industries. As I understand it the major help, and where it had a major advantage on other similar attempts, was by access to advance research and testing facilities of avionics in the IAI (a quasi government company in charge of commercial and military development of avionics). Especially wind tunnels and similar simulators. That being said, it is still a very much private orginazion
- Fjolsvith 8y agoI wonder if it could be seen from earth by telescope.
- adrianN 8y agoThe Keck Telescope has a 10m mirror, so it can resolve roughly 1.2 * 400n / 10 radians (at 400nm wavelength)[1]. The distance to the Moon is about 384000km. If you plug things into Wolfram Alpha [2], you get about 18m for the smallest object on the Moon that can be resolved by the Keck Telescope. I suppose that there are more technical problems that further limit the resolution. It seems unlikely that you'll be able to see anything using a telescope. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution#Explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution#Explanation [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=tan((1.2*400nm+%2F+10m))+*+distance+to+the+moon https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=tan((1.2*400nm+%2F+10m...
- rosegarden0 8y agoI wonder why this news isn’t as widespread as SpaceX launches. I would have loved to follow this from the beginning! Whats the best place to stay updated about this specific mission? - what a time to be alive
- yonixw 8y agoYou can watch the landing here [1] starting in 90min [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMdUcchBYRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMdUcchBYRA
- DannyB2 8y agoThanks
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- spaceheretostay 8y agoSpaceX's goals of creating a Mars colony with millions of people moving there in 20-60 years andreducing most long-distance travel on Earth to ~40 minutes create much wider audiences with huge excitement attached to every move. Also, Elon Musk is a celebrity and drives a lot of SpaceX interest. Israel's SpaceIL is much smaller, has much more constrained focus and draws a smaller crowd due to the less-epic plans and less-known personalities. Not to take away from their accomplishments - I love this news story - but are lots of reasons that this is less-publicized as compared to SpaceX launches. We all know that each successful SpaceX activity gets us closer to a Mars colony and that is super duper exciting.
- radley 8y agoThere has been news about it for a while. There was some concern of pre-publicizing the attempt if it were to fail. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/science/beresheet-israel-moon-orbit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/science/beresheet-israel-... https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/watch-the-historic-first-private-mission-to-the-moon-launch-thursday-night/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/watch-the-historic-first-p... https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/26/18239738/spaceil-beresheet-lunar-lander-israeli-private-industry-moon-missions https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/26/18239738/spaceil-bereshee...
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoGood to know.. Land on the moon? Check. Treat Palestinians as Humans who have civil rights? NO.
- justtopost 8y agoNot exactly a 'private' craft as I understand it... Can anyone clarify or fix the title?
- dillonjeff 8y ago50 years late
- pelasaco 8y agoThe live Streaming looks like a state financed program.. the whole politicians there, no english subtitles..
- stuff4ben 8y agoSeems as though it crashed? The telemetry feed cut out at 149m from the surface. Lots of people with hands on their heads.
- milesokeefe 8y agoYep, they just called it.
- stuff4ben 8y agoThere was a bunch of Hebrew being spoken and then they announced in English that they were not successful.
- JasonGenova25 8y agoYeah i was laughing my ass off when I saw the altitude above surface was 0.15 km and the descent rate was 134.3m/s. Still, an achievement was made and I wish them luck in the future. This stuff always has me in awe, no matter the result.
- dlgeek 8y agoThey crashed. Based on the occasional English commentary during the stream, they had an IMU failure, that recovered, but then a main engine failure right near the end of the descent. They got the engine online again, but just looking the speeds on the telemetry, it was too late.
- zymhan 8y agoYup, sadly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19638357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19638357 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/israel-moon-landing-beresheet.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/israel-moon-landi... > On the way down, the main engine cut out. The engine was successfully restarted, but then communications were cut off, and no more information was sent back.
- TY 8y agoEven though they crashed, this is still a monumental achievement. For once I agree with Bibi, that if you fail you should try again.
- infinite_luck 8y agoUnfortunately, it crashed. They said they were having problems with the main engine. They restarted it, but as it was restarting it seems as if it gained too much velocity. It seems like the engine started again, but only right before it impacted with the surface at 134 m/s.
- age_bronze 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_on_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_on_the_Moon For everyone wondering how common is it, it seems like it took everyone multiple tries before figuring out how to properly land something there.