
Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash - figgis
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/israel-moon-landing-beresheet.html
======
oriolgg
I was just watching it live, cheering for SpaceIL, it's a pity that the
landing was not successful.

I was part of the engineering team of the Japanese team Hakuto of the Google
Lunar XPRIZE. I always wondered how it would feel to be in the control room at
this time, but our launch deal fell through. I can understand what the SpaceIL
engineers are going through right now.

Congratulations to all the SpaceIL team for reaching this far, your work has
been impressive. Keep trying and you will make it!

~~~
ronnier
Maybe not a success this time, but a lot will be learned. These types of
failures are now we learn, adapt, and move forward.

~~~
sanxiyn
I doubt SpaceIL will be able to use anything they learned. IIUC they are out
of money and can't move forward.

~~~
dmix
The prime minister of Isreal announced they'll try again in two years. So that
judgment may be a little premature.

Regardless knowledge transfer isn't limited to either of those.

~~~
electriclove
Is this a government venture or private? I read that it is private but then I
see quotes about the PM like this.

~~~
Itaxpica
Private but partially funded by the government; the PM was at the launch and
had (before the crash) been trumpeting it as a success for the country as a
whole

------
jpindar
What appears to be the last image the spacecraft managed to send before it
crashed:

[https://twitter.com/EladRatson/status/1116427960033136640](https://twitter.com/EladRatson/status/1116427960033136640)

------
pfortuny
So: first attempt to get to the moon (by them, who are not quite USA or China)
and they just fail at the very end.

Like getting a silver medal at the Olympics. Yes, sad. But man!

~~~
hirundo
With a population of < 3% of the USA, < 1% of China.

~~~
moate
Right, and I'm sure they didn't get any tech or mission critical help from the
US.

Don't get me wrong, good on them for doing this, but let's not pretend like
this happened in a bubble away from anyone else.

~~~
brandonmenc
> I'm sure they didn't get any tech or mission critical help from the US

What's your point? NASA got a bunch of help from Nazi scientists.

~~~
SEJeff
If someone puts a gun to your head and says "Do this thing or you and your
family will be executed" it doesn't make you the same as them. Coming from
Nazi Germany does not make them necessarily Nazis.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, Von Braun was most definitely a nazi and not driven by threats of bodily
harm. He was just very into rockets, and worked with whoever let him develop
them.

------
Symmetry
As they say, space is hard and SpaceIL is hardly the first to have lost a
lander.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon)

It came tantalizingly close to working, though, and I have high hopes for
future attempts. _Per aspera ad astra_.

~~~
jansan
Thanks for teaching me a new Latin proverb. I like that very much.

------
mrtksn
It seems that they just got a new word in the dictionary:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/teamspaceil/status/11163129311033...](https://mobile.twitter.com/teamspaceil/status/1116312931103399937)

I find it a bit irritating to be that cocky when it comes to space technology.
Better luck next time!

~~~
ctdonath
Count your blessings.

They are the 4th country to reach the Moon (albeit at 1km/s).

~~~
khuey
No, they would have been the 4th country to _land_ on the moon. Both ESA and
ISRO have previously conducted (intentional) impact missions.

~~~
chmielewski
khuey with the correction. Yes they would have been the 4th country to land on
the moon. They settled to be the 7th country to orbit.

------
jesseab
It's time to retire the tired old nation-state space-race narrative. We're all
in this together people. Their failure is our failure.

~~~
brandmeyer
Nothing could be further from the truth. These folks are fierce with
nationalistic and sectarian pride in their vehicle.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/teamspaceil/status/11163129311033...](https://mobile.twitter.com/teamspaceil/status/1116312931103399937)

~~~
nir
It took me a while to understand what's going on in these comments before I
was reminded of the 30 Rock episode where a Canadian character has trouble
understanding sarcasm because there aren't many Jews there.

But still, did you all miss the winking emoji right there following the text?

------
zymhan
> 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.

Definitely a terrible time to have an engine failure :/

~~~
reaperducer
_then communications were cut off, and no more information was sent back._

Have any of these moon landings been done at night where people have been able
to watch it happening through a telescope? Or are things so small at the
moon's distance that there'd be nothing to see?

~~~
aurailious
The resolution a 10 meter telescope on Earth can make out of the moon is about
22 meters per pixel. We can yet make out the moon landing site with earth
based telescope.

~~~
dmurray
Making a 23 metre mark on the moon seems like a natural project for some
country, then. Perhaps easier than orchestrating a soft landing.

There are lunar retroreflectors about a metre across [0] that are detectable
with optical equipment, for some definition of optical. But to leave a mark
that can be seen from earth - to leave your tag, or an X, or a crude drawing
of a penis and testes - surely that's an urge as old as art itself.

[0][https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20100413-apollo15-LRRR.html)

------
m0zg
Surprised by the sheer number of naysayers on the thread. What is wrong with
you people?

7th country to get that far in space, 4th to attempt to land, those are
enormous achievements for a country that's has 2/3rds the population of New
York (city, not state) and doesn't have a hundred billion dollars to burn in a
dick-measuring contest. They'll launch another one and land next time.

If Israel knows anything, it's how to persevere.

------
51Cards
Article subtitle: "The failure of the landing highlighted the risks of a fast
and cheap approach to space exploration."

I would say the opposite. Not specifically just in reference to this mission
but in general. They now have a lot of experience and data to use going
forward for "not much" expense. A lot of extremely expensive missions were
lost because they didn't have the opportunity to iterate.

~~~
mjevans
The history of rocketry really took off during WW-II, and was further refined
by the military (generic, but pretty much the nations that have successfully
landed on the moon), further developing and releasing to civilian government,
and eventually private interests.

If I were to make a guess extrapolation to air-flight we're probably still
roughly in the 1940s. Private space flight is making things more standard and
long-run production instead of one-offs; but we aren't there yet and haven't
found workhorse designs that are both reliable and cheap. Experiments like
this will hopefully help us get there.

~~~
ncmncm
30s, but OK.

Aircraft production was fully industrial going into the 40s.

------
mmsimanga
If at first, you fail, try and try again. This was sobering. I watched
expecting the normal rush I get when watching live events of this nature but
it was not to be.

------
talhof8
Still a great achievement! An inspiration for all kids looking to do science.

------
sctb
Discussion prior to the outcome:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634570).

------
ragebol
That's got to be tough: successfully going ~300000km from Earth and then see
it fail in the last couple hundred meters. With nothing you can do.

~~~
moate
Landings and take offs are always the hardest part of any aerospace event.
You're much more likely to see system or mechanical failures when you first
start everything up or try to stop moving on an uneven surface.

------
deathhand
Why do we give aid to space fairing nations? Couldn't the aid be better spent
on our own space program?

~~~
gerash
It seems Israel is doing just fine economically and technologically. So I
don't get why US politicians still justify giving out O($billion) every year
in foreign aid while there are ample opportunities to spend them in their own
country.

~~~
tick_tock_tick
Cause all the aid is conditioned on them using it to buy US military hardware.
It's roundabout military spending.

~~~
Udik
> Cause all the aid is conditioned on them using it to buy US military
> hardware

Not true, only 3/4 of it. And it's not an explanation, otherwise they could
give the same aid to any other country, but they don't.

"Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since
World War II."

[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf)

------
rmason
I am not sure what connection that Buzz Aldrin had to the folks at SpaceIL but
thought he had a pretty classy tweet tonight. Guess everyone in the space
community pulls for each other.

[https://twitter.com/TheRealBuzz/status/1116458014708420608](https://twitter.com/TheRealBuzz/status/1116458014708420608)

------
acomjean
Well they got very close. I really can't get enough of images from space. The
gallery linked from the article was pretty good.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/11/science/space...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/11/science/spaceil-
beresheet-moon-photos.html)

I haven't been able to find what it would have done had it landed correctly.
(edit) I guess it had a few scientific instruments and a "time-capsule" of
sorts. Wikipedia editors are fast, they already have the crash on there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceIL)
\--------------- Payload

The spacecraft carried a "time capsule" created by the Arch Mission
Foundation, containing over 30 million pages of analog and digital data,
including a full copy of the English-language Wikipedia, the Wearable Rosetta
disc, the PanLex database, a Nano Bible (complete Bible in Hebrew), children's
drawings, a children's book inspired by the space launch, memoirs of a
Holocaust survivor, Israel's national anthem (Hatikvah), the Israeli flag, and
a copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.[8][35][36][37][38]

Its scientific payload included a magnetometer supplied by the Israeli
Weizmann Institute of Science to measure the local magnetic field, and a laser
retroreflector array supplied by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to enable
precise measurements of the Earth–Moon distance.[39][40]
\---------------------

As an aside, the youtube video series on the original Apollo launch computer
it pretty neat. (The core memory on those old machines was nuts..)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/mverdiell/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/mverdiell/videos)

------
Ice_cream_suit
Great name ! In Hebrew, it means " In the beginning..."

------
sharksauce
The saddest thing is that the moon men are still bereft of queso:
[https://www.kvue.com/article/news/weird/austin-queso-
launche...](https://www.kvue.com/article/news/weird/austin-queso-launched-
into-space-crash-lands-on-the-moon/269-b9180441-c518-40c4-af37-1898ba9e528b)

------
sandworm101
A hard landing is still a landing. This is rocket science, not general
aviation.

------
dmitryminkovsky
I don't understand how you even attempt to recover from failures that occur
during a descent like this. Latency to the moon appears to be 1.3 seconds. How
much time do you have to do anything?

~~~
deathhand
Multiple 'if' statements and then backup modules loaded with more 'ifs'

------
sschueller
Why did they not have live video of the landing attempt? Should be double
shouldn't it? What was used in the 60s to broadcast the landing?

~~~
sanxiyn
This was an extremely low budget mission. Live video is of course doable, but
probably not with the budget.

------
peteradio
So is this the first moon wreckage?

~~~
olex
Far from it. Both the USA and USSR have crashed multiple landers before
successfully touching one down. And that doesn't even count intentional
"impactor" missions that came before that.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and a billion years of meteorite rubble

------
nicodjimenez
After seeing how people drive in Tel Aviv, I'm not surprised.

------
Jach
Too bad. "You just destroyed a 100 megabuck lander." Alternatively, 85% of a
Juicero.

------
nayyad
So now you want to convince me that in 1969 they could man land on the moon
and then come back to earth and in 2019 they still trying to nail down the
tech ?

~~~
rorykoehler
How much did NASA spend in the 60s?

~~~
nayyad
What technologies did they have in the 60s? I computer used to cost thousands
of dollars and its the size of your room in the 60s also.

~~~
rorykoehler
We have both landed and crashed on Mars and the Moon recently. We're not just
trying to figure this out, we're trying to figure it out AND do it cheaply.

------
techie128
Do I detect a bit of condescension in NYT's tone? Do we need to remind the
numerous failures US & USSR had before they got their space program off the
ground? Also, they forgot India who did send a lunar orbiter and sent a probe
on Moon's surface back in 2008.

~~~
sanxiyn
Chandrayaan-1's Moon Impact Probe was an impactor, not a lander.

~~~
ncmncm
Both were, in the end.

But this one was going slower.

