Spacecraft crashes in to lunar surface after engine and communications breakdown

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

An Israeli spacecraft has crashed into the lunar surface, ending the first privately funded attempt to land on the moon.

About the size of a washing machine, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander experienced an engine and communication failure in the last seconds of touchdown.

The mission ended Israel’s hopes of joining the ranks of Russia, the US and China as the only countries to have made controlled landings on Earth’s nearest neighbour.

“We had a failure in the spacecraft. We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully,” said Opher Doron, the general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ space division.

“It’s a tremendous achievement up to now,” he added, saying the probe had already made Israel the seventh country to orbit the moon and the fourth to reach the lunar surface.

Israel To The Moon (@TeamSpaceIL) Don’t stop believing! We came close but unfortunately didn’t succeed with the landing process. More updates to follow.#SpaceIL #Beresheet pic.twitter.com/QnLAwEdKRv

Named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for genesis, the four-legged craft had intended to measure magnetic fields from its landing site on a lunar plain called Mare Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity.

Its frame held a time capsule of digital files the size of coins containing the Torah, children’s drawings, dictionaries in 27 languages, Israeli songs, as well as memories of a Holocaust survivor.

Beresheet was launched in February aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, one of SpaceX’s private fleets run by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.

While crewed lunar trips have taken around three days, the probe took a much more circuitous route for its four million-mile (6.5m km) journey. It has spent 47 days, gradually making ever-widening elliptical orbits around the Earth until it was “captured” by the moon’s gravitational pull and looped closer to its surface.

On Wednesday, the lander made a manoeuvre to lower its altitude for a lunar orbit of between nine and 124 miles while preparing for the landing. It managed to take a photo of the moon minutes before communication was lost.

Funded almost entirely by donations, Beresheet was built by SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit set up for the mission, in partnership with the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. It cost about £70m, a fraction of the cost of previous state-led missions.

Far side of the moon: China's Chang'e 4 probe makes historic touchdown Read more

Morris Kahn, a South African-born Israeli billionaire, is the main backer but the US Republican party and pro-Israel funder Miriam Adelson and her casino-owning husband, Sheldon, also gave $24m.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at mission control, said: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again.”

US and European space agencies intend to use an expanding commercial space industry to send people back to the moon. A Nasa-led plan is already underway to build a small crewed space station orbiting the moon, and the private sector has been tasked with helping to build it.

Russia was the first country to make a soft landing, rather than a plummeting crash, on the surface of the moon in 1966. Following the end of the space race in the 1970s, there was no return until China sent a lander in 2013. In January this year, Beijing made history by landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon.