Beresheet reaches moon, crashes on arrival By Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21c Wild cheers turned to stunned silence on April 11 as Israel’s Beresheet unmanned spacecraft suddenly lost contact with the control center. Only minutes before, it had sent a spectacular selfie as it neared the surface of the moon. It was a little after 10 p.m. Israel time. I was at the Jerusalem Cinemateque watching a live feed of the historic event at a design-andtech evening hosted by StartUp Nation Central. Sitting around me were Alex Padua, the lead industrial designer of the craft; former NASA director Dan Goldin; representatives of the X Prize Foundation; Israeli venture capitalists; and lots of local families. Several minutes away at the President’s Residence, President Reuven Rivlin was hosting a pajama party for dozens of 9- to 12-year-old Israeli kids, all watching history unfold via the IAISpaceIL control center in Yehud. Our mood was euphoric as at first the complicated landing maneuver seemed to be proceeding like clockwork, actually a few minutes ahead of the estimated 10:25 p.m. touchdown. We applauded madly when the little craft successfully passed the point of no return and sent that selfie from a breathtaking
12 MAY 2019 | HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY
altitude of 22 kilometers from the moon. That’s when things started going wrong. Telemetry from Beresheet was momentarily lost and regained. A problem in the main engine was quickly repaired. Then communication with Beresheet was lost and the engine problem returned. “Our situation is unclear,” IAI Space Division General Manager Opher Doron told thousands of astonished viewers across the world. “Uh oh, uh oh, something’s not working,” the man sitting next to me whispered to his teenage daughter. “It’s going to crash. It’s going too fast. Look how quickly the altitude went from 20,000 to 149! It must be crashing.” There were several groans from the audience but mainly just tense silence until finally we heard from the control room: “All the signs are that we will not be the fourth country in the world that lands on the moon, but we recorded a huge achievement. We reached the moon, but apparently not in the way we wanted.” Doron said, with surprising poise, “We had a failure in the spacecraft; we unfortunately have not managed to land successfully. We are the seventh country to orbit the moon and the fourth to reach the moon’s surface. It’s been a tremendous achievement up to now.” SpaceIL Chairman Morris Kahn, 89, who contributed $42 million to the privately funded effort, took the microphone from Doron. “Well, we didn’t make it,” said Kahn. “But we definitely tried. And I think that the achievement of getting to where we got is really tremendous. I think we can be proud.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said to Kahn, “If at first you don’t succeed, you try again. We will try again. We reached the moon but we want to land more softly and this will be on the next attempt. In another three years a spacecraft will land on the moon – whole.” Across town, Rivlin soothed the pajama-clad children. “Yes, we are disappointed, but there is no doubt that our
achievements and abilities – of our scientists and our country – are wonderful,” the president said. “When we were children your age, we never even dreamed we would go to the moon. I hope that you will be the scientists who get to the moon and achieve even greater things. We will succeed in the end.” The kids then joined the president in singing “Hatikva” (The Hope), Israel’s national anthem. And among the adults at the Jerusalem Cinemateque that night, applause rang out again, our distress already morphing into hope for the next time around. There was also good news from Lunar XPRIZE: “They may have not had a successful landing this time, but SpaceIL has still made history. We are happy to announce they will still be the recipients of our first ever $1M Moonshot Award, in honor of their achievements and their milestone as the first privately-funded entity to orbit the Moon.” And, on the night of April 11, Kahn announced the establishment of Beresheet 2. “This is part of my message to the younger generation: Even if you do not succeed, you get up again and try,” said Kahn, who is recruiting a new group of donors and has appointed an engineering team to begin immediately. The Beresheet 2 project already has $1 million coming its way, courtesy of the Lunar XPRIZE Foundation. “SpaceIL’s mission not only touched the Moon, it touched the lives and hearts of an entire world that was watching,” said Peter H. Diamandis, executive chairman and founder of XPRIZE. “The legacy SpaceIL will have on the future of the space industry is significant. This team’s ability to build a lunar lander for $100 million and less than 50 engineers is remarkable, a leap forward toward affordable and accessible space exploration.” SpaceIL was founded in 2011 by Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub, in order to compete in the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE, which expired a year ago without a winner.