{"id":13319,"date":"2019-02-26T22:47:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T14:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/computer-reset-cancels-orbit-raising-burn-on-israels-moon-lander\/"},"modified":"2019-02-26T22:47:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T14:47:50","slug":"computer-reset-cancels-orbit-raising-burn-on-israels-moon-lander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/computer-reset-cancels-orbit-raising-burn-on-israels-moon-lander\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer reset cancels orbit-raising burn on Israel\u2019s moon lander"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artist\u2019s illustration of the Beresheet lander\u2019s elliptical transfer orbit around Earth. Credit: SpaceIL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A computer reset on the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander forced has the postponement of the mission\u2019s first engine firing to begin maneuvering closer to the moon, officials said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Mission managers said the robotic lander \u2014 seeking to become the first privately-funded spacecraft to reach another planetary body \u2014 automatically aborted an orbit-raising maneuver after its on-board computer reset unexpectedly. The engine firing was planned Monday evening, U.S. time.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the pre-maneuver phase the spacecraft computer reset unexpectedly, causing the maneuver to be automatically cancelled,\u201d the team said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Beresheet \u2014 which means \u201cin the beginning\u201d or \u201cgenesis\u201d in Hebrew \u2014 launched Feb. 21 from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding piggyback with the Indonesian Nusantara Satu communications payload and the U.S. Air Force\u2019s S5 spacecraft to monitor satellite traffic in geostationary orbit.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s upper stage released its payloads in an elliptical orbit ranging up to 43,000 miles (more than 69,000 kilometers) above Earth, with a perigee, or low point, less than 200 miles in altitude.<\/p>\n

While Nusantara Satu and the military\u2019s S5 space surveillance spacecraft head for geostationary orbit \u2014 located more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator \u2014 Beresheet is heading the the moon, taking a circuitous stepwise approach utilizing 10 burns by the lander\u2019s main engine, a repurposed communications satellite thruster.<\/p>\n

Beresheet was developed by SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit organization founded to promote education for Israeli students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields. SpaceIL raised money from private donors to cover the Beresheet lander\u2019s nearly $100 million development cost, with a prime goal of inspiring students to pursue scientific and engineering careers.<\/p>\n

Minutes after arriving in space, Beresheet radioed its status to ground controllers at Israeli Aerospace Industries, which built the lander for SpaceIL. The probe\u2019s four landing legs extended as designed shortly after separating from the rocket.<\/p>\n

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SpaceIL\u2019s Beresheet lunar lander. Credit: SpaceIL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ground team noticed the lander\u2019s star trackers, which the spacecraft needs to determine its orientation in space, have \u201chigh sensitivity to blinding by the sun\u2019s rays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beresheet ignited its 100-pound-thrust main engine for the first time Sunday to raise the perigee of its orbit to an altitude of roughly 373 miles (600 kilometers). The perigee raise maneuver lasted 30 seconds and went off without a hitch, according to SpaceIL.<\/p>\n

But the lander\u2019s computer reset Monday while it was out of communications with the ground team, triggering the abort of the next engine burn, which was planned to extend the apogee of Beresheet\u2019s orbit nearly 73,000 miles (117,000 kilometers) from Earth.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s burn was the first maneuver programmed to send Beresheet closer to the moon, located approximately a quarter-million miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe engineering teams of SpaceIL and IAI are examining the data and analyzing the situation. At this time, the spacecraft\u2019s systems are working well, except for the known problem in the star tracker,\u201d SpaceIL said in a statement. \u201cCommunication between the control center and the spacecraft remains as planned, and Beresheet continues its previous orbit until the next maneuver.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Beresheet spacecraft was scheduled to enter lunar orbit April 4, then spiral down to a lower altitude in preparation for landing April 11 in Mare Serenitatis, one of the vast, dark lava plains on the near side of the moon.<\/p>\n

Beresheet is taking a long, circuitous journey to the moon to save money and fuel. The mission would have needed a dedicated rocket to make a direct trip to the moon, an expense the SpaceIL team could not afford.<\/p>\n

Other missions have successfully taken a long trip to the moon before, including NASA\u2019s LADEE probe, which launched in September 2013 and arrived at the moon a month later after several burns to boost its orbit farther from Earth before its capture by lunar gravity\/<\/p>\n

One of the pitfalls of using a longer journey to reach the moon is that the probe spends more time traveling through the radiation belts, donut-shaped rings of charged particles surrounding Earth that could pose a hazard to spacecraft electronics. It was not immediately clear if radiation could have caused Beresheet\u2019s computer to reset Monday.<\/p>\n

Beresheet\u2019s original flight plan called five engine burns to position the spacecraft near the moon April 4, when a sixth engine firing \u2014 with the help of lunar gravity \u2014 was planned to swing the probe into an elliptical lunar orbit. Additional engine firings were planned to lower Beresheet\u2019s altitude above the moon to a circular orbit, before the final braking maneuver ahead of the April 11 landing.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s illustration of the Beresheet lander\u2019s elliptical transfer orbit around Earth. Credit: SpaceIL A computer reset on the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander forced has the postponement of the mission\u2019s first engine firing to begin maneuvering closer to the moon, officials said Tuesday. Mission managers said the robotic lander \u2014 seeking to become the first privately-funded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2274,291,1672,1673,625,1561,1563,2700],"class_list":["post-13319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-beresheet","tag-commercial-space","tag-israel","tag-israel-aerospace-industries","tag-moon","tag-planetary-science","tag-solar-system","tag-spaceil"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}