A Technical Fault Led To The Crash Of The Israeli Beresheet

According to SpaceIL, the uncrewed Israeli spacecraft, Beresheet has collided during an effort to touch down the moon due to a technical fault. The Israeli agency that launched the Beresheet has referred to initial data. In a sequence of tweets, SpaceIL has stated that behind the crash of a $100 million spacecraft, the team’s engineers believe that a technical glitch has affected the main engine of Beresheet to stop and afterward it made difficult for the team to slow the Beresheet descent.

As per the SpaceIL officials, the Israeli spacecraft’s initial technical glitch happened at about 8.7 miles above the moon’s surface. The spacecraft has then lost communications with the control room, located in Israel at the time of its landing sequence. The company stated in its tweet that at a height of 150 meters from the moon’s surface, the team lost the connection with the Beresheet and at that time, the spacecraft was traveling at a speed of up to 500 km/h and hence making a collision unavoidable. The team was able to start again communications with the Beresheet but according to the officials it was too late and it was already moving very fast towards the moon. The mission was the first ever privately funded lunar operation. The name of the spacecraft was referred from the first word of the Hebrew Bible, which decodes to, “in the beginning”.

In February, Beresheet was propelled into space and it went on a seven-week expedition to touch the moon. It orbits the Earth numerous times before being diverted to the moon and has traveled around 4 million miles in the process. Beresheet got crashed in the last moments afore making an easy, precise touch down on the moon. The mission team was just on its way turning out to be the world’s fourth national space agency to make a precise landing on the moon.