Beresheet, a small Israeli spacecraft with the giant ambition of landing on the lunar surface, has completed maneuvers to go into orbit around the moon.
Atround 10:18 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, the spacecraft fired its engines for six minutes, slowing down enough to be captured by the moon’s gravity. Although the maneuver appeared to have been executed without problems, it’ll be half a day before confirmation that the spacecraft has entered its intended orbit.
That by itself would be a major achievement, something that has only been accomplished by five nations — the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, Japan and India — and the European Space Agency.
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Beresheet, built by SpaceIL, a nonprofit in Israel, is the first privately financed venture to send a spacecraft into orbit so far from Earth. SpaceIL was originally aiming to win a $20 million Google Lunar X Prize as the first private robotic craft to set down on the moon, but the deadline passed last year. SpaceIL pushed on even without the monetary incentive.
The orbit on Thursday will be elliptical in shape, with the spacecraft passing within 310 miles of the moon’s surface and swinging out as far as 6,200 miles away. Three more engine firings over the next week will push Beresheet into a circular orbit 124 miles above the surface.
It has been a long journey, designed to skimp on fuel, size and cost. Beresheet, which means “Genesis” or “in the beginning” in Hebrew, launched in February. It has fired its engines several times to raise the highest point of its elliptical path around Earth, until it crossed the path of the moon.
On Thursday, the moon and Beresheet passed close to each other, with the moon’s gravity slinging Beresheet away from Earth. By firing its engines, the spacecraft slowed enough to allow it to be captured by the moon’s gravity.
Then comes the hardest part: landing, scheduled for April 11.
“Our luck is still holding, and we’re going to make it,” said Morris Kahn, an Israeli telecommunications billionaire who provided financial backing to the mission.
If that is successful, then SpaceIL will join just NASA, the former Soviet Union and China in successfully landing a spacecraft on the moon in one piece.
Beresheet’s success comes amid renewed interest in exploring the moon. China earlier this year successfully set down its Chang’e-4 robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the first nation to do so. NASA hopes to send scientific payloads on commercial landers to the moon as soon as this year.
The Trump administration wants to send astronauts back to the moon, and this month it announced that it would like to accelerate the program, with new astronaut footprints on the lunar surface as soon as 2024. NASA has not yet laid out how much it would cost to get people there that quickly, and some members of Congress have questioned why there is a rush.
India also intends to place its robotic Chandrayaan-2 lander on the moon this year. At one point it seemed as though India and Israel might be in a moon landing race, but the launch of the Indian spacecraft has faced a series of delays, with local news reports recently suggesting a May launch date.
Kenneth Chang has been at The Times since 2000, writing about physics, geology, chemistry, and the planets. Before becoming a science writer, he was a graduate student whose research involved the control of chaos. @kchangnyt
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