Beresheet

Beresheet
A model of the moon landing device
NSSDC ID	2019-009B
Mission goal	Soft landing on the moon
Manufacturer	SpaceIL
Launcher	Falcon 9
construction
Takeoff mass	585 kg
Instruments
Magnetometer , laser reflector , high resolution camera
Course of the mission
Start date	February 22, 2019
launch pad	Cape Canaveral SLC-40
End date	April 11, 2019
02/22/2019 begin 04/04/2019 Swing into the lunar orbit 04/11/2019 Unplanned impact on the moon

Beresheet ( Hebrew בראשית- Bereschit / Genesis ; originally known as Sparrow , English for sparrow ) was an Israeli lunar landing device that crashed on the moon on April 11, 2019 after an initially scheduled flight into lunar orbit. A follow-up mission called Beresheet 2 was planned but was abandoned.

Planning and construction

Beresheet was developed by SpaceIL , a group of Israeli space enthusiasts led by software entrepreneur and billionaire Morris Kahn , in collaboration with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The project is considered to be the first privately initiated and financed lunar mission, the initial spark being given by the Google Lunar X Prize competition . According to various conflicting sources, Beresheet was built by SpaceIL, by IAI, or both together. The project was also supported by the Israel Space Agency .

For the Lunar X Prize, which has now expired, it was required that at least 500 meters distance be covered on the lunar surface after landing. Beresheet was supposed to do this using small rocket engines. However, this plan was abandoned after the competition ended to reduce the risk of the mission.

The cost of the entire mission was approximately $ 100 million.

aims

Place of impact of the probe

One of the mission goals was to create a prototype for future commercial moon landings. To this end, SpaceIL wanted to cooperate with private and state space companies. The 585 kilogram and one and a half meter tall probe was supposed to set up an Israeli flag on the moon and examine the moon's magnetic field .

In addition to the scientific equipment, there was also a time capsule on board . In it are or were analog and digital storage media that contained documents and works that were particularly important for Israel, including a Hebrew Bible , but also text and XML from the English language Wikipedia . There were also human DNA samples and several thousand dried tardigrade on board. Another mission goal was to get young people interested in space exploration, technology, and engineering.

If successful, Israel would have been the fourth nation, after the Soviet Union , the United States, and the People's Republic of China , to have brought scientific equipment to the moon by soft landing. Other countries in which such an attempt is planned are Japan with the Hakuto-R Mission 1 , Germany with the Mission to the Moon and South Korea with the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter .

course

The last telemetry data from Beresheet shows a speed of 946.7 m / s horizontally and 134.3 m / s vertically at an altitude of 149 m

The probe was launched on February 22, 2019 from the Cape Canaveral spaceport as a secondary payload of a Falcon-9 rocket from SpaceX (the main payload was the communications satellite PSN-6 ). After separating from the upper stage of the rocket, Beresheet was launched in an elliptical earth orbit with a maximum altitude of 69,000 km and the landing legs extended. At the beginning of the flight problems arose with the on-board computer and the star sensor , but these could be resolved or circumvented by software updates .

After several planned orbit corrections, Beresheet swung into an elliptical orbit of 500 km × 10,000 km around the moon on April 4, 2019 with a six-minute braking maneuver . The speed of the probe was reduced by 324 m / s . The orbit was then reduced in several maneuvers to a circular orbit at an altitude of 200 km.

The landing was scheduled for April 11, 2019. Since the probe had no temperature control , it was expected to overheat relatively quickly after landing. The service life on the lunar surface was estimated to be two days.

The landing was initiated at a height of 25 km and about 800 km from the planned landing site by igniting the engines. At an altitude of 14 km there was a problem with an inertial measuring unit . After that, the telemetry failed temporarily . After restoring the data connection, it was noticed that the main engine was switched off. The attempt to regain control of the landing by restarting the system failed. At around 9:23 p.m. ( CEST ), the probe hit the moon at high speed and left a small crater.

Communication with the spacecraft was initially accompanied by a ground station at the Esrange in Sweden, after the transition into a lunar orbit then via the Deep Space Network of NASA .

Instruments and technical data

The following key data are known:

• Dimensions: approx. 2 m × 1.5 m
• Mass: 585 kg at take-off, of which approximately 435 kg is fuel ( MON / NTO ).
• Main engine: Modified Leros 2b from Nammo with 407 N thrust, 318 s (= 3119 m / s) specific momentum .
• Power supply: solar cells on the top
• Scientific payload:
  • Magnetometer from the Weizmann Institute of Science
  • Laser retroreflector array of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• 8 megapixel color camera with a field of view of 80 ° × 60 ° and a focal length of 21 mm

Awards

Although the ultimate mission goal was not achieved, SpaceIL received the "Moonshot Award", endowed with one million US dollars, from the X-Prize Foundation .

Follow-up missions

Two days after the crash landing, SpaceIL and Morris Kahn announced a follow-up mission called Beresheet 2 or Beresheet 2.0 . It should complete the task of the first mission and bring an Israeli flag to the surface of the moon by 2022 at the latest. Kahn saw the financing of the project as secure. However, on June 25, 2019, SpaceIL announced that plans for a second flight to the moon had been abandoned. The first mission had been perceived as a success, and the Beresheet 2.0 project was now looking for a new, greater challenge.

IAI decided to develop the new Genesis lunar lander together with the US space company Firefly Aerospace . It is said to be based on Beresheet technology and to be manufactured in the USA. Firefly would like to offer the lander to NASA for the CLPS program .

IAI also entered into a cooperation with the Bremen-based space company OHB . Under the program name Lunar Surface Access Service (LSAS), OHB would like to offer payload transports to the lunar surface with a lander developed by IAI.

Web links

Commons : Beresheet lunar probe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• SpaceIL site (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Beresheet Lunar Lander . eoPortal, accessed on February 21, 2019.
2. ^ ^{A b} Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Israel sends first privately financed lunar lander on its way. February 19, 2019, accessed February 19, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Israel's Beresheet Lunar Lander Moves Into Moon Orbit. In: The New York Times. April 4, 2019, accessed August 27, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Jeff Foust: Firefly to partner with IAI on lunar lander. In: Spacenews. July 9, 2019, accessed July 9, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Christine Lunsford: Israel's 1st Moon Lander: The SpaceIL Beresheet Lunar Mission in Pictures. In: space.com. Retrieved February 19, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Twitter message from Eric Berger, February 21, 2019.
7. ^ Mike Wall: Pioneering Israeli Lunar Lander Arrives in Orbit Around the Moon. In: space.kom. April 4, 2019, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Israel sends spacecraft to the moon for the first time on Friday. In: Israelnetz .de. February 14, 2019, accessed March 15, 2019 . 
9. ^ The Lunar Library: Genesis (SpaceIL, 2019). The first library on another celestial body. , Arch Mission Foundation, accessed April 12, 2019
10. ↑ A Crashed Israeli Lunar Lander Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon. In: Wired . August 5, 2019, accessed August 6, 2019 . 
11. ↑ South Korea's first lunar mission planned for 2020. December 7, 2017, accessed on June 29, 2018 . 
12. ↑ Israel sends spacecraft to the moon for the first time. Spiegel Online , February 22, 2019, accessed on the same day.
13. ↑ ^{a b c} Beresheet in the NSSDCA Master Catalog , accessed on April 11, 2019 (English).
14. ↑ ^{a b} Stephen Clark: Israel's Beresheet lander brakes into lunar orbit. In: Spaceflight Now. April 4, 2019, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
15. ↑ Maneuver puts SpaceIL lander on course for the moon. In: Spacenews. March 19, 2019, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
16. ↑ Beresheet Over Comes Early glitches, Continues Journey to the Moon. Planetary Society, February 28, 2019, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
17. ↑ With SpaceIL launch, its to the moon and beyond for Israel . Yaakov Lappin, Heritage. April 11, 2019.
18. ↑ Tilmann Althaus: Israeli lunar probe Beresheet shattered - Update. In: Spektrum Verlag. May 16, 2019, accessed May 16, 2019 . 
19. ↑ ^{a b} Stephen Clark: Israeli probe crashes in attempt to become first privately-funded moon lander. In: Spaceflight Now. April 11, 2019, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
20. ↑ ^{a b} Jason Davis: What to expect when Beresheet launches to (and lands on) the Moon. Planetary Society , February 18, 2019, accessed April 13, 2019 . 
21. ↑ BBC News: Israeli unmanned spacecraft to land on Moon in 2019 , July 10, 2018.
22. ↑ ^{a b} LEROS-2B in the Encyclopedia Astronautica , accessed on April 11, 2019 (English).
23. ^ Nasa: Israel Space Agency Sign Agreement for Commercial Lunar Cooperat , accessed December 3, 2018.
24. ^ NASA Announces New Moon Partnerships with US Companies.
25. ^ Eytan Halon: Despite crash, SpaceIL to receive $ 1 million Moonshot Award. In: The Jerusalem Post . April 12, 2019, accessed April 13, 2019 . 
26. ↑ SpaceIL chief: 'Beresheet 2 starts tomorrow, we'll put our flag on the moon'. In: The Times of Israel . April 13, 2019, accessed April 13, 2019 . 
27. ↑ Twitter message from SpaceIL, April 13, 2019.
28. ↑ SpaceIL cancels Israel's Beresheet2 moonshot. In: Globes. June 26, 2019, accessed June 25, 2019 . 
29. ↑ Twitter message from SpaceIL, June 25, 2019.
30. ↑ Jeff Foust: Firefly to partner with IAI on lunar lander. In: Spacenews. July 9, 2019, accessed July 9, 2019 . 
31. ^ OHB and IAI plan commercial lunar lander mission in late 2022 . Spacenews, May 13, 2020.