Reuters report that a robotic moon lander built by private donors
in Israel has launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9
rocket.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sydney Morning Herald, Reuters
The unmanned robotic explorer named Beresheet - Hebrew for "genesis" or "in the beginning" - lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8.45pm local time (12.45pm on Friday) atop a Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX company.
The 585-kilogram, dishwasher-sized lander was built by Israeli nonprofit space venture SpaceIL and state-owned defence contractor Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) with $US100 million furnished almost entirely by private donors.
Beresheet is due to arrive on the near side of the moon in April following a two-month, 6.5 million-kilometre journey.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald
"This is the beginning of Israel's story in deep space ... whether this succeeds or fails," SpaceIL president and billionaire high-tech developer Morris Kahn, who invested $US44 million of his own money into the Beresheet project, said.
The Falcon 9 rocket will thrust Beresheet into a "long and complex" Earth orbit where it will spend roughly five weeks gradually widening its orbit until it is close enough to enter the moon's gravitational field.
From there, the spacecraft will execute a series of manoeuvres to reach its destination between the landing sites of Apollo 15 and 17 by mid-April.
During a mission slated to last just two to three days on the moon, Beresheet will use on board instruments to photograph the landing site on the Sea of Tranquility, SpaceIL vice-president Yigal Harel said.
It will also measure the moon's magnetic field and send all the data back to SpaceIL's Israel-based ground station Yehud, via NASA's Deep Space Network, he said.
If successful, Beresheet will end up as the prototype for a series of future moon landing missions planned jointly by IAI and Germany's OHB System on behalf of the European Space Agency.
SpaceIL has no plans for future explorations of its own beyond Beresheet and "will not continue after this mission", Harel said.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald
The mission began in earnest in 2009, when founders Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub registered for Google’s Lunar X Prize - a moon race to build and land a commercial lunar spacecraft. The first competitors to do it would win a $US20 million first-place prize.
They founded SpaceIL in 2011 and, in 2015, scored a launch contract with SpaceX. SpaceIL was later named one of five finalists for the prize, along with Cape Canaveral-based Moon Express.
But as the competition wore on, it became apparent that none of the companies were going to be able to meet the deadline to land on the moon, and so Google ultimately scrapped the competition in March 2018.
But SpaceIL and IAI pushed ahead, surviving financial challenges to complete the lander. In addition to Kahn, Dr Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-American doctor and philanthropist, and her husband, casino magnate and investor Sheldon Adelson, contributed $US24 million to keep the lunar lander soaring.
|
Story and video here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/is...22-p50zki.html