Crash ends Israel’s moon mission in failure
Still only 3 nations have made lunar landing
Israel’s attempt to become the fourth country to land on the moon fell short Thursday when its robotic probe crashed into the lunar surface.
The attempted landing by the Beresheet probe — which translates in Hebrew to “in the beginning” — was captured on livestream along with the sad faces in the Israeli control room.
“We have had a failure in the spacecraft,” said Opher Doron, general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ space division. “We have unfortunately not managed to land successfully.”
The United States remains the only country to leave human footprints on the moon. The other two countries that have successfully landed probes on the surface are the Soviet Union in September 1959 and China in December 2013 and January 2019.
Despite the tiny country’s failure, the crash was met with warm wishes, congratulations and support on social media for
attempting something that few have accomplished.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine applauded Israel and its partners on Twitter for “sending the first privately-funded mission into lunar orbit.”
“Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress,” Bridenstine wrote. “I have no doubt that Israel and SpaceIL will continue to explore and I look forward to celebrating their future achievements.”
‘Space is hard’
The probe was launched Feb. 21 on the back of a SpaceX rocket and experienced a largely flawless mission until Thursday. It was built by the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL for just $100 million and was not carrying humans to the surface.
The mission would also have marked the first time a commercial lander had ever reached the lunar surface.
“Don’t stop believing,” SpaceIL tweeted. “We came close but unfortunately didn’t succeed with the landing process.”
Before crashing Thursday, Beresheet snapped a selfie with the moon in the background about 14 miles above the lunar surface. A small, shiny gold flag can be seen in the photo — with the words “small country, big dreams” below a Star of David.
Just a few minutes later, the probe crashed — eight years of work ending in disappointment.
“Space is hard, but worth the risks. If we succeeded every time, there would be no reward. It’s when we keep trying that we inspire others and achieve greatness,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, wrote Thursday on Twitter. “Thank you for inspiring us @TeamSpaceIL. We’re looking forward to future opportunities to explore the Moon together.”
Israeli researchers began hashing out the details for the probe in 2011, and SpaceIL competed in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition using the idea. When the competition ended without a winner last year, SpaceIL continued working.
The end result was a 5-foot-tall probe equipped to study the moon’s magnetic field.
Beresheet caught the eye of NASA and last year, as Israel inched closer to its launch date, the American space agency signed an agreement with Israel to “cooperatively utilize” the probe, meaning they both would have benefited from the mission.
NASA officials said in October that Israel was planning to share data about the magnetic field of the landing site with the U.S., which would have been available publicly via NASA’s Planetary Data System.
Returning to the moon
Beresheet won’t be sharing anything now. But it appears that Israel plans to try again.
“If at first you don’t succeed, you try again,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after receiving news that the landing attempt had failed.
Israel’s landing attempt comes as more and more countries gear up for a mission to the moon. This change has come, in part, because it’s easier and cheaper to do than it was on July 20, 1969, when the U.S. landed men on the moon for the first time, said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website dedicated to space news.
“It’s the gold standard of technological accomplishments, to be a nation to send someone or something to the moon,” Cowing told the Houston Chronicle earlier this year. “I think there’s been a general renaissance in thinking … that space is something you should no longer be afraid of trying to do.”
India, for example, hopes to launch a moon probe soon. The country’s last probe to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, was launched in October 2008. It was deliberately crashed into the lunar surface about a month later.
Officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have voiced an interest in working with NASA on human and robotic missions both on and around the moon. In the early 1990s, Japan intentionally crashed a probe, Hiten, into the lunar surface.
The European Space Agency also intentionally crashed a probe into the lunar surface in 2006.
‘Any means necessary’
Going to the moon is also a priority of the Trump administration. Since taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump has pushed for a return to the moon for the first time since 1972 as a steppingstone for a mission to Mars.
That goal was underscored last month by Vice President Mike Pence, who directed NASA in March to put Americans on the lunar surface four years early — in 2024 instead of 2028 — by “any means necessary.” The accelerated timeline will require more money, however, and the agency still has not provided an updated budget request to Congress.
“The president has said he wants 2024 and I will tell you this: NASA is up to achieving it,” Bridenstine said Tuesday during a speech at the 2019 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “The question is how we’re going to do that. Well, I’ll tell you: All the elements necessary to getting humans to the moon in 2028 are all elements that still exist. But the things we’re going to invest in, we’re going to move them up.”